Saturday, August 1, 2015

Experience: False Abuse Memories Nurtured in 2016


Therapist and 'personal development coach' nurtures false memories of abuse in 2016

       Daughter of Lord ''stolen' from a loving family by mysterious therapist Mrs. Anne Craig. Her grandmother Lindy Ticehurst, 78, wants to see Victoria before she dies.  Many former clients with similar stories to tell. It is claimed Mrs Craig said she can analyse dreams, contact spirit world

       At the age of 78, Lindy Ticehurst is facing a diagnosis of terminal cancer with admirable stoicism. Hers has been a life well lived, and now, in her final weeks, she is surrounded by a loving family.  There is, however, one heartfelt bucket list item she would like to fulfil, and that is to see her granddaughter Victoria before she dies.

      It has been some considerable time since they last spoke. Indeed Victoria, a beautiful young woman whose family controls a fabulous shipping fortune, is not merely distanced from those close to her. She has vanished, cutting off all contact four years ago after allegedly falling under the influence of a mysterious 'healer' Anne Craig– a woman who specializes in working with wealthy young women.


Picture of Anne Craig who specializes in working
with wealthy young women as a
a self-described 'personal development coach'

       The therapist in question is Anne Craig, a self-described 'personal development coach'.   According to Mrs Ticehurst, after sessions with Mrs Craig, Victoria became convinced she was abused by her parents.  Now a Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered several former clients with disturbingly similar stories to tell. Mrs Craig, it is claimed, has told them she can analyse dreams and is in touch with the spirit world. It is said she seeks to examine whether their problems have been caused by a dysfunctional upbringing.
       The ex-clients also claim the therapist's methods isolated them, forcing them to rely on her. One young woman told The Mail on Sunday Mrs Craig had tried wrongly to suggest that she, too, had been sexually abused by her father.  While Mrs Craig denies any wrongdoing, what remains beyond doubt is that 26-year-old Victoria Cayzer has been beyond the reach of her family for the past four years.  Now Victoria's mother, Lady Caledon, and stepfather Lord Caledon are preparing a landmark legal case against the therapist which they hope will allow their daughter's grandmother to see her again. They also want to set a legal precedent enabling others to sue those they blame for wrecking their family life.
       Breaking the family's silence about the painful estrangement, Mrs Ticehurst said: 'Before I die, I want to see my granddaughter for one last time. I feel I have no option but to speak publicly in the hope of getting the message through to Victoria. I want to say goodbye.'  Her decision to speak out comes amid the extraordinary battle between one of Britain's most discreet and influential families and Mrs Craig – a fight which has so far resulted in two arrests and a High Court action.  Mrs Ticehurst continued: 'My daughter does not want to talk because she is worried she may lose Victoria forever.  But I do not have the luxury of time.  In January I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It has spread to the lymph nodes and lungs.  The prognosis then was six weeks.  'It is inoperable and the only thing keeping it at bay is the chemotherapy.  'I have written to Victoria through Craig's solicitors because we don't even know where she lives. The pain of missing out on so many years already is incalculable, and is compounded by seeing the overwhelming sadness and distress this has caused her mother.  'We want Victoria to know that she will be welcomed back to her family with open arms. Love never dies.  'I have no idea why she won't talk to us because she has never explained why she has cut us off. We do not blame Victoria. We want her to know that she is very much loved.'
        Mrs Ticehurst added: 'Victoria is not alone. This pattern has happened to several young women who have come under the influence of this woman and they and their families have suffered as we have. It has to stop.'  Victoria is the child of Amanda Squire and Charles Cayzer, whose family fortune began with a Victorian shipping empire and now rests with the $2 billion Caledonia investment trust.  Her parents divorced, and in 2008, the year before Victoria went to Leeds University, her mother married Lord Caledon – whose paternal ancestors acquired their wealth through the East India Company, and whose mother was a Siemens engineering heiress.  The family seat is the 5,000-acre Caledon Castle in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Since 1989, Lord Caledon has been Lord Lieutenant of Armagh, as well as managing a 3,000-acre estate in Hertfordshire.
       Victoria's first connection with Mrs Craig came after a group of her friends studied art in Florence and met the therapist's daughter, Tara.  One of those friends encouraged Victoria to see Mrs Craig, who works with clients at the South London home she shares with her husband Rodney, a former Royal Navy commander who is chief executive of the prestigious University Women's Club in Mayfair.
       A friend of Victoria, who was also a client of Mrs Craig, said: 'I was so close to Victoria, she was like a little sister to me. She did not say in detail why she went to see Craig, but did say she didn't want to repeat the mistakes of her parents – at that age you want to understand yourself.  I went to four $150 sessions that lasted between three to four hours each.  I came out feeling drained and exhausted.  She was confusing me. 'The sessions focused on looking at your family and taking them apart and, I felt, putting the blame on them and those around you.'

    There is no record of Mrs Craig, the daughter of an Irish farm laborer, being a member of any recognized therapist association. Neither is there evidence of any relevant qualifications.  She has, however, posted online adverts offering a 'holistic approach using healing energies and dreams to help you fulfill your potential on a personal and professional level'.  She adds: 'I teach you how to find your own inner resources and healing.'
       Mrs Ticehurst began to see a change in her granddaughter as soon as she started visiting Mrs Craig. 'Victoria stayed with me when she came down to London and she would come in from a two-hour counselling session barely able to speak because she was absolutely exhausted,' the grandmother said. 'This was in the very early days of her involvement. I got the sensation that Victoria was slightly angry, but it never crossed my mind that this would happen and why would it?
       'I was concerned that Victoria did not have a proper job and had lost her boyfriend.  With the benefit of hindsight I realize she was becoming isolated.' It was in December 2012 that the family eventually realized things were out of control.  Mrs Ticehurst recalled: 'Amanda met with Victoria at Starbucks in Gloucester Road for a cup of tea. Victoria started shouting and accused Amanda and her father of abusing her as a child. She went on to accuse Amanda of all sorts of things that were simply not true.'
       Victoria removed all her belongings from her parents' homes and cut financial ties with her family.  The last time that Mrs Ticehurst set eyes on her granddaughter was shortly before Christmas 2012.  'I insisted I wanted to see her,' she recalled.  'It was very cold, but she wanted to meet outside a Chelsea pub, where we sat with our coffees.  Victoria was not very communicative and spent most of her time on her phone talking or texting.
      'I felt that she was in contact with someone else throughout. It was a very unhappy meeting and I felt that Victoria was very sad. At the end of it I was so upset.'   Matters took an even more traumatic turn in the summer of 2014, when seven police officers arrested Lady Caledon for alleged harassment after she took a card and some books to Mrs Craig's house for her daughter.  Lady Caledon said the custody sergeant refused to detain her, declaring it to be a wrongful arrest and there was no further action.  In October the same year, Mrs Craig was arrested for alleged fraud – but after six months on conditional bail the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case.
       Last year, Lord and Lady Caledon launched a High Court action designed to force the Metropolitan Police to disclose evidence gathered during their investigations into both Lady Caledon and Mrs Craig.  They want to use the information in their action against the therapist.  Victoria is not the only previously happy young woman who appears to have undergone a change in character after meeting Mrs Craig.
       Henry Strutt, a company director, said his 29-year-old stepdaughter Laura Hue Williams was a client of the therapist and a friend of Victoria – and that she, too, has cut off contact with her friends and family.  'Laura has in effect gone missing,' he said. 'We do not know where she is living and have no contact details for her.  We do not know whether she is safe or even whether she is still alive. Attempts to contact her about the death of her uncle or the forthcoming marriage of her sister have met with silence.  'This is devastating for her mother, her family and all her friends.  They fear for her safety and her mental health because she has undergone a complete personality change over the past few years.   'Those few friends who have managed to see her have said that the 'old Laura' is almost unrecognizable. What has happened should be outlawed in any civilized country.'
       Another of Mrs Craig's ex-clients said: 'I was confused and unhappy and took a few sessions to tell her what worried me – that I was gay and was going to have to come out to my Catholic parents. She took this all in and manipulatively used it against me over 18 months. She's very empathetic and almost theatrical and slowly hooked me in, turning my confusion into credible answers. 'She told me that I was not gay and that I had some weird relationship with my mother. She used lots of control methods. We were told not to read books, magazines or newspapers because they were designed to lead us astray.  'She taught us humans had gone the wrong way because we used our heads instead of our hearts and that she was the only therapist in the entire world that practices this deep healing. She also told me that she had been sexually abused. She would say, 'Were you abused?' Then there would be a pregnant pause. I imagine under that theatrical context so many of her clients would say, 'Yes.' But I always said no because I was not abused and not going to let some woman tell me that I was.'  The former client added: 'Eventually I managed to get some distance from her. I paid a heavy price for my experience with Anne Craig. It was a lonely time.  She told me my friends and family were bad: it was their fault and never my fault. She controlled my thinking.'
       Dr Nicki Crowley, a consultant psychiatrist, said: 'What is incredibly sad from my point of view is that these essentially high-functioning young women, coping with the usual pressures of life after university, were persuaded to go and see this 'therapist/counsellor/healer' for general support and help. Instead, their sense of self-worth and self-confidence have been eroded.'
       Of the planned legal action, Mrs Ticehurst said: 'In this country there is nothing you can do if you lose your adult children to a supposed therapist or healer. As a parent you have no options legally even if you have been defamed and your family's home life wrecked.'
       A spokesman for Mrs Craig said she had not made up any allegations about any family. She rejects any claims she instilled false memories in anyone, or that she questioned her clients in such a way as to suggest they were abused as children.  Lady Caledon’s lawyer Clare Kirby, who advises on suspected psychological manipulation, said: ‘The problem with the law is that there is no redress available to the family if family relationships are destroyed when someone believes that they have been abused. Therefore the civil law needs to change.'

By ADAM LUCK and CLAUDIA JOSEPH FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 16:07 EST, 23 April 2016 | UPDATED: 04:55 EST, 28 April 2016
Found 4/28/2016:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3555578/Beautiful-society-girl-stolen-loving-family-mysterious-dream-therapist-Terminally-ill-grandma-78-claims-beloved-granddaughter-vanished-healer-wrongly-convinced-d-abused.html
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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.

Experience: Television Movie that Caused Hysteria Found Fake

     One of the most foolish and devastating episodes of social hysteria in America was the rise of "multiple personality disorder" in the era between, roughly, 1980 and 2000. Before 1980, only a handful of cases had ever existed world-wide, and the "multiples" came in pairs. In the 1950s, "The Three Faces of Eve" added one more personality to the mix. MPD then languished, as a rare psychiatric curiosity, until "Sybil" was published in 1973. The title patient produced 16 personalities before she was through, and became a national phenomenon.  Flora Rheta Schreiber's book sold more than six million copies, and 40 million Americans watched the 1976 two-part television special starring Joanne Woodward and Sally Field was seen by an estimated fifth of all American Households on television.  The movie was depicted as a true story.  It is now known to be a fake.


The famous patient who inspired the panic was more the victim of her psychiatrist than of mental illness....
        If Helen's face launched a thousand ships, Sybil's faces launched tens of thousands. In her wake, people began coming out of therapy claiming that they had dozens, even hundreds, of "alters"—human, animal, mechanical and vegetable. By 1980 so many psychiatrists had begun looking for sensational cases of MPD in their own troubled clients—and finding them—that for the first time it became an official diagnosis in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." MPD was a growth industry; eminent hospitals, notably Rush Presbyterian in Chicago, opened MPD treatment centers. By the mid-1990s, according to some estimates, as many as 40,000 cases had been reported.
       Yet Sybil's story, which started it all, was a complete fabrication. Sybil, whose real name was Shirley Mason, did not have a childhood trauma that caused her personality to fragment, and her "personalities" were largely generated in response to pressures, subtle and coercive, by her psychiatrist, Cornelia (Connnie) Wilbur, whom she wanted desperately to please.
       The true story of Sybil has found its ideal historian in Debbie Nathan, whose earlier book, "Satan's Silence" (with Michael Snedeker), debunked the "ritual sex abuse" panic that swept across the United States at the same time as MPD. Ms. Nathan's indefatigable detective work in "Sybil Exposed" has produced a major contribution to the history of psychiatric fads and the social manufacture of mental disorders. This is the book that should be a made-for-TV movie.
       Sybil was a fake, but not entirely a fraud. Self-deception, Ms. Nathan shows, was the motivation for all three principals involved in the creation of her persona: the patient, the psychiatrist and the writer. Each faced a choice when confronted with the evidence that Sybil was not a multiple personality: Accept the truth or press forward with a story they knew was a lie. Ms. Nathan deftly shows how emotional dependence, grandiose ambition and financial incentives from need to greed tilted their decisions.
      Ms. Nathan begins with the early lives of the three: Shirley, who grew up in a tiny Minnesota town, the only child of Seventh-day Adventists; Connie, who saw wealth and professional glory if she could get a good story out of her distressed, dependent patient; and Flora, a New York magazine writer whom Connie commissioned to turn Shirley's story into a book with a "happy ending." Each of these women, who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s, yearned to break out of the confines imposed on them by religion, region or gender: Shirley, to become an art teacher; Connie, to prove wrong her father's claim that she was "too stupid" to be a doctor or chemist; Flora, to become a great writer.
       Shirley, who suffered from various physical and emotional ailments for most of her life, began psychoanalytic treatment with Connie in 1955. Before long, the two women struck a deal: Shirley would allow Connie to publish her story of being a multiple personality, and the cost of her treatment would be taken out of the book's royalties.
       Connie began injecting Shirley with sodium pentothal (falsely called "truth serum," more properly "fanciful imaginings serum") and recording whatever Shirley said under its influence.  Most of it was dreamlike garble, with an occasional alarming "memory" thrown in: Once Shirley recalled being forced onto a table, knocked out by medication and seeing a man looming above her. Connie assumed Shirley had been raped.  Much later Shirley admitted it was a memory of her tonsillectomy.
       Connie turned Shirley into an addict, giving her nearly a dozen drugs, including barbiturates, tranquilizers and anti-psychotics (such as Thorazine). Even with this "help," Ms. Nathan writes, "Shirley's new 'trauma' memories were pathetically trivial." But if Shirley couldn't produce a traumatic secret that was the reason for all her alters, there could be no resolution and no book. And so, in 1958, after four years of therapy, Connie simply withheld the sodium pentothal that Shirley was addicted to. Shirley was devastated. She wrote a long letter to Connie, admitting she was "none of the things I have pretended to be . . . I do not have any multiple personalities. . . . I do not even have a 'double.' . . . I am all of them. I have been essentially lying."
       Connie had a choice. She could give up the most important case of her career, or she could justify her misdiagnosis and failure to help her patient in familiar psychoanalytic jargon. Shirley, she explained, was experiencing massive denial and resistance—evidence that the therapy was working. Now Shirley had a choice. She could continue being a "multiple" and keep Connie and drugs in her life, or leave therapy, owing Connie a fortune she could never repay. Shirley went home and wrote Connie a second letter. It must have been another alter, she said, who wrote the first one. Connie upped Shirley's sessions to five a week and resumed the sodium pentothal.
       In 1965, almost 11 years after their first psychotherapy session, Connie announced that she was moving to a new job in West Virginia. She told Shirley that she was welcome to come along, but she would have to integrate her multiple personalities right away so that the book could finally be written. Shirley immediately produced a new identity as herself and never again dissociated.
       Flora faced her own choice about Sybil after finally getting a contract from a small publisher in 1969. Doing some investigative legwork for the book, she discovered huge discrepancies between Shirley's memories and what Shirley herself had written in her diaries at the time the alleged events occurred. If her mother went on lesbian orgies in the woods and defecated on neighbors' lawns, the young Shirley didn't say a word about it. No one in Shirley's hometown corroborated Shirley's memories, nor did her childhood medical records. And then Flora found Shirley's letter saying that she never had multiple personalities. Flora had to decide whether to give up this luscious project, which she was already fantasizing might be as successful as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," or to believe Connie and Shirley.
       When Ms. Nathan, as part of her own investigation, persuaded forensic experts to examine some of Shirley's key diaries, she learned that entries marked "1941" were written in ballpoint pen, which was not used in the United States until 1945. Ms. Nathan suspects Shirley wrote these entries years later, probably at Connie's urging, to support the MPD story and persuade Flora to stay with the project.
       What, then, did Sybil suffer from? Is MPD "real"? Yes and no. MPD is what some psychiatrists call a culture-bound syndrome, a culturally permitted expression of extreme psychological distress, similar to an ataque de nervios (an episode of screaming, crying and agitation) in Hispanic cultures and "running amok" in Malaysia. As Ms. Nathan suggests, "the Sybil craze erupted during a fractured moment in history, when women pushed to go forward, even as the culture pulled back in fear."
       The disorder seems real to clinicians and their patients who believe in it, but it results from suggestion, sometimes bordering on intimidation, by clinicians. One eminent MPD proponent actually told his colleagues that they might need to interview a patient for up to eight hours nonstop before an alter appears! Once that happens, the therapist rewards the patient with attention and praise for revealing more and more personalities, as Connie did to Sybil.
       Flora Rheta Schreiber died in 1988, age 72. Her papers, including Sybil's therapy records, went to John Jay College in New York City, where they were sealed from public view to protect Sybil's identity. A decade later, when two diligent investigators discovered her real name, the box was opened to the public.
       Cornelia Wilbur died in 1992, age 86, when MPD was at its height of popularity with her colleagues. Her executor, a former patient, destroyed her papers.
       Shirley Mason died in 1998, at age 75, alone with a framed photo of Connie and the doll collection she had kept with her since childhood. In exchange for a life in Connie's orbit, she gave up close friends, enjoyable work as an art teacher and an offer of marriage to a man she loved.
       The MPD bubble burst in 1995, when several patients sued a St. Paul psychiatrist for malpractice, alleging that she had used punitive methods to induce their "multiple personalities." They were awarded millions of dollars, and the psychiatrist eventually lost her medical license. More malpractice suits followed; hospitals closed their inpatient MPD units; and the epidemic subsided. Psychological researchers went on to scientifically discredit virtually all the assumptions underlying MPD, such as the belief that trauma is commonly repressed and causes "dissociation" of personality. Harvard psychologist Richard McNally calls this notion "a piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support."
       Yet the promulgators of MPD do not seem to have learned anything. They changed the label to "Dissociative Identity Disorder," but a skunk by any other name is still a skunk. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation continues to give its Cornelia B. Wilbur Award "for outstanding clinical contributions to the treatment of dissociative disorders." When Ms. Nathan told the society's president, Kathy Steele, about "the extensive evidence of Connie's ignorance, arrogance, and ethical misconduct" that she had unearthed, that Sybil was "a performance based on fiction," Ms. Steele replied: "So what? I don't know what difference it makes."

       What difference does a correct diagnosis make? At a professional meeting in 1989, in response to a question from the audience about how Sybil was doing, Connie announced casually that Shirley suffered from pernicious anemia, a disease that causes an inability to process vitamin B-12.   Discovering that Connie knew this fact about her patient may be Ms. Nathan's greatest scoop, for symptoms of pernicious anemia include just about everything that plagued Shirley Mason throughout her life:  fatigue, social withdrawal, anxiety, hallucinations, muscle pains, confusion about identity, distorted memories and changes in personality.   No one in Connie's audience of psychiatrists, Ms. Nathan writes, took note.

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—Ms. Tavris is the author, with Elliot Aronson, of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)."

Published  October 29, 2011
Article Originally found 4/4/16 at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204524604576609350972680560

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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.

Experience:: Therapy Still Spreading Tragedy

WHERE ARE THE 1990's WITCH-HUNTERS? 
REPRESSED MEMORIES &
SATANIC RITUAL SEEKERS
HAVE NEW NAMES!

       The recovered memory therapy, child incest and satanic ritual abuse of the 1980's and 90's imprisoned many innocent people and has been long discredited.  This article looks at where the practitioners of recovered memory therapy have gone since being revealed as fraudulent in the late 1990's.  The prominent names are now using terms such as "Dissociation Identity Disorder" and "Interactive Family Systems" when naming disorders or treatment .  Leaders of "recovered memory practitioners" now suggest insurance codes that are more general such as "biofeedback" or "assisted psychotherapy". In a conference for "International Society or the Study of Trauma Dissociation" a leader suggested that members use the words "complex trauma" rather than "repressed memories", "multiple personality disorders" or disociative identity disorder".   Evidence of fringe science abounds at "Dissociate Disorder Convention" gatherings including talks on topics such as "paranormal eye-beams" (by the president of the association) among other bizarre topics.
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“I have met many demons, devils, evil characters, representatives of Satan, and Satan himself in my MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder] work.”
– Colin Ross, MD, 1994 & Past President,
    International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD)

“I remain troubled about the matter of transgenerational satanic cults.”
– Richard Kluft, MD, 2014 Past President, ISSTD

       It is with an ironic sense of disdain that we can now look back upon the day-care sex-abuse hysteria of the 80s and 90s, with its imaginary conspiracy of pedophilic Satanic cult activity did so for reasons of religious fervor.  A foundational text for the “Satanic Panic”, as it came to be called, was co-authored by a professional and educated psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder who, with his client-turned-wife, Michelle Smith, wrote of Smith’s alleged early ritual abuse at the hands of a secret Devil-worshipping society. Michelle Remembers (1980), billed as a true story and humored as such within the talk-show circuit of the time, was a ludicrous supernatural horror story in which both Christ and Satan made dramatic guest appearances. The senseless, confabulatory ramblings upon which the “facts” of the book were constructed, were gleaned from hypnotic regression sessions, in which Pazder claimed Smith had recalled horrific events that had previously been “repressed” deep within her unconscious mind.
       It doesn’t take any lofty credentials in psychology to whiff an imaginary enemy’s loathsome proclivities. And while the Satanic Panic witch-hunt extended well beyond any particular faith and beyond political boundaries — even at times finding its paranoid claims prosecuted, without credible evidence, in the hallowed halls of secular “justice” — one can still easily sense that same guilty projection in all of the twisted, grotesquely detailed child abuse fantasies of that era. In passionate tones of moral outrage, self-appointed occult crime authorities and Ritual Abuse experts gathered at informational meetings and conferences to revel in sadistic child abuse tales.
        Those who remember the more laughably dated ideas that arose from the panic will find it hard to believe when we say that the Satanic Panic is still alive and well… in fact it’s never gone away. But this is the case. The Satanic Panic never died, it just faded from mainstream attention. Many of the old purveyors still propagandize to insular, dedicated groups and, in another twisted irony, they mostly spread their delusions in the name of mental health itself.

       In 2015, an eating disorders clinic known as “Castlewood”, in St. Louis, MO, settled four lawsuits brought against them by former clients who claimed that during the course of their “treatment” at the center, they had been led to believe that they had repressed memories of traumatic abuse, including that of the ritualistic, Satanic kind. The author of these delusions, it was claimed, was one Mark Schwartz, co-founder and former clinical co-director of the facility. In 2004, on his Curriculum Vitae, Schwartz listed “Dissociative Disorders” as one of his “Clinical Specialties”. 
       Where one finds “Dissociative Disorders”, one tends to find a belief in the mythic “Multiple Personality Disorder” (MPD), now rebranded as “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (DID). And where one finds this alleged disorder, one invariably finds notions of concealed, “repressed” trauma, and therapies devised to draw forth hidden memories from the unconscious. Where one finds such therapies, one finds the most hysterical subcultures of conspiracist delusion imaginable.
      Just a few years ago, in 2012, Satanic Ritual Abuse charges against a family in Missouri were eventually dropped, with the prosecutor, Kellie Wingate Campbell stating to the Associated Press, “Whether or not I believe the allegations is an independent question from whether or not I believe I can prove each and every element of the case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.” Clearly she felt she could not. What Campbell failed to mention is that many charges were already disproven when alleged physical evidence, including buried bodies, failed to manifest in a massive excavation of the family’s property. Medical records subpoenaed from the accusers also failed to provide record of alleged injuries that the Judge himself noted “would have certainly required critical care.” Also left unsaid was that the accusations were the result of the accusers’ “recovered memories”.
       The accused, financially ruined by legal fees, and stigmatized by the accusations, can never recover from the episode. Campbell, of course, need have no fear of being so much as reprimanded for prosecutorial misconduct. Even Lael Rubin, the prosecutor in the seminal Satanic abuse daycare case of McMartin Preschool — the longest, most expensive case in American history, marred by false testimony and concealed exonerating evidence — escaped any official censure. Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General who, as District Attorney, fought hard to keep a clearly innocent victim of the hysteria, Gerald Amirault, in prison for 18 years, just barely lost a bid for Governor in the most recent election.
       The perpetrators and purveyors of the Satanic Panic, who destroyed countless lives and families, never experienced justice for their cruel stupidity, and many of them still operate with smug impunity exactly as they did during the height of the hysteria.


       On Nov. 26th, 2013, a former day-care worker named Fran Keller was finally released from prison after 21 years spent for crimes she could not possibly have committed by any reasonable interpretation of reality. With no physical evidence to support the accusations (which included claims of graveyard rituals, cannibalism, and medically undetected limb transplants) Fran, and her husband, Dan, were convicted on the most dubious of child testimony drawn from coercive and incompetent interrogations by zealous witch-hunters. The children were ignored when they claimed they were not abused at all (as happened even in testimony) — and the impossibility of the claims was dutifully ignored as irrelevant to claims of a greater truth.
       Dr. Randy Noblitt’s expert testimony was instrumental in the conviction of the Kellers. Noblitt, an old-school anti-Satanist buffoon of the subliminal message-divining kind, explained away the lack of physical evidence by invoking the conspiracy’s magnitude: police officers and other officials were involved in the cover-up. The children had been systematically traumatized as a means to brainwash them into repressing the memories. Following the trial, Noblitt revealed in an interview that he had caught Mr. Keller using vague hand signals in an effort to communicate to secret fellow Satanists in the jury.
       In a letter to the Court on behalf of the Keller’s eventual successful appeal, Associate Professor Dr. Evan Harrington, of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology noted that “the world portrayed by Dr. Noblitt is one in which thousands of cult abusers have infiltrated respectable society, and specifically daycare centers, in order to operate a clandestine subculture engaged in massive levels of felonious criminality, all based on mind control triggered by secret handshakes and hand signals.” The letter, bearing signatures of support from various esteemed social and behavioral scientists, concludes by stating that Noblitt’s “opinions have been scientifically discredited, and are not shared by the vast majority of clinicians and researchers within the field of psychology.”
       But where is Randy “L’il Knob” Noblitt today, now that social conditions aren’t nearly so amenable to the tin-foil hat Torquemada whose doctoral thesis was on The Celestial Concomitants of Human Behavior, more colloquially known as Astrology? He’s a professor of Clinical Psychology at Alliant University where his faculty profile lists his primary expertise as “Cult and ritual abuse”, and among “courses taught” we find “Ritual Abuse” as one of but three.
L’il Knob could be found in attendance at last month’s conference of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), “an international, non-profit, professional association organized to develop and promote comprehensive, clinically effective and empirically based resources and responses to trauma and dissociation and to address its relevance to other theoretical constructs.”

       Despite its inclusion in the 5th edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), DID doesn’t enjoy general support among psychiatric professionals as a legitimate disorder. Before its publication, the DSM-V task force received a letter signed by top psychiatrists, urging them to remove the condition from the manual. Dr. Allen Frances, task force chair of DSM-IV, lamented the continued inclusion of DID in the DSM, referring to the disorder as “complete bunk” in a 2013 Wall Street Journal interview. Nonetheless, it remains.

       The ISSTD struggles to maintain the appearance of an “empirically based” outfit, despite zero scientific support. Retrospective surveys of the DID-diagnosed are quantified into statistics, and presented as evidence of the condition’s legitimacy. Bad data is used, and good data is abused. In his 2003 book, Remembering Trauma, Dr. Richard McNally of Harvard University meticulously debunks primary DID literature. The actual substance of his findings are dutifully ignored by the faithful.
       Some among the ISSTD utilize treatments insurance companies won’t even cover, leading therapists like Sebern Fisher (MA, BCN), to recommend creative billing. (“Stop recording…” Fisher demanded at the conference before confiding to the audience, “I bill psychotherapy code…I don’t want that on the record. …There’s a code for biofeedback, assisted psychotherapy, which no insurance company acknowledges.”)
       Su Baker (MEd), also speaking at the recent ISSTD conference, recognizes that DID is quickly being recognized as a simple renaming of the debunked MPD, so she recommends easing new minds into the concept through courses in “complex trauma”. “We can’t use the word dissociation… So we use complex trauma knowing that down the road you lead people into the dissociative field and the way of thinking about that.”
       Colin Ross, an ISSTD past president and recipient of their “Distinguished Achievement Award”, has devised standardized interview schedule to make DID sound ‘sciency’. With the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule (DDIS), according to Ross, one can say, “Well, I made a clinical diagnosis and I confirmed it,”… “And so, in the United States, that is a little bit […] legally protected.”
        Ross fully understands the importance of legal protection. In Manitoba, he was accused of malpractice — the worst case of medical malpractice one expert witness claimed to have ever seen — by a former patient, Roma Hart. She claimed Ross had instilled her with bizarre and perverse delusions, including the belief that her family was involved in a Satanic crime-ring, and that Hart herself had been forcibly impregnated by extraterrestrials, even birthing a hybrid infant. Overmedication brought Ms. Hart to the precipice of death on several occasions. Ross relocated to Texas where almost identical claims were brought against him by one Martha Tyo. The hospital settled, and Ross now runs his own research foundation “to further the understanding of psychological trauma and its consequences.”
        In 2008, Ross beclowned himself by claiming he could demonstrate “paranormal” eye-beams, measured in EEG. When it was pointed out (by a real scientist) that his readings were merely picking up artifact from blinks and muscle movement, Ross agreed, though he continued to insist his eye-beams were real.
       The DDIS contains a series of questions related to Supernatural/Possession/ESP Experiences/Cults” which, if authored by anybody but Ross, one might reasonably assume to be an attempt to measure delusional beliefs. However, given Ross’s history, and the history of “dissociative disorder” studies in general, it’s not outrageous to wonder if the supernatural claims are taken at face value.
       In 2012, a book entitled 22 Faces carried a forward by Ross and an endorsement from ISSTD past president Joyanna Silberg. Marketed as the “true story” of a woman who recovered memories of Satanic abuse, the book was an absurd tale of superstitious paranoia. In it, the protagonist experiences ESP, demonic possession, is abused by levitating Satanists, and is ultimately saved by way of divine intervention when Jesus himself intercedes on her behalf. Silberg writes that she and her peers “are all too familiar with the kinds of crimes and disorders described in 22 Faces.”

       And this is where today’s Western, somewhat secularized, witch-hunters currently reside: among psychology’s pseudoscientific fringe; feeding delusion to the mentally vulnerable behind the protection of therapist-client privilege, and under the guise trauma therapy. While they revel in their disturbed pornographic fantasies of child-rape and extreme abuse, they proclaim their critics to be demented defenders of pedophilic assault. They co-opt the narrative of victim’s rights to conceal their absurd conspiracy theories from criticism and scrutiny. To question the validity of DID, or even the reality of a Satanic conspiracy, is — according to this defensive ploy — to question the very existence of child abuse itself.  In this way, actual victims of abuse are used as human shields to defend our modern inquisitors as they engage in the most outrageous and under-investigated mental health scandal of our time.

       Between the two of them, the authors [of this article] have attended conferences, seminars, and workshops, spanning Recovered Memory subcultures from Alien Abduction support groups, Ritual Abuse seminars, Past-Life regression sessions, and ISSTD lectures. As they sift through their findings and transcribe their audio, the results will be posted at www.dysgenics.com. They hope to bring reform to the Mental Health field, and promote general awareness of Recovered Memory quackery.

By Douglas Mesner and Sarah Ponto Rivera

Comment:
       In the original and somewhat longer version of this article references are made to those with academic degrees that are aware of how science and clinical treatment truly works and those with degrees that do not know how science and mental health professionals should interact and inform each other.  The authors do not overgeneralize but focus on the academic background and pursuits that provide evidence for the assertions (such as a dissertation title that depicts principles of astrology as a focus of investigation explaining the personality of people.)  The authors do not imply or overgeneralize that all professionals with  degrees are misinformed.  
       The same is not true for those of faith.  The original version of the article does not distinguish people of faith who believe in conspiracy theories involving satanic cults that are bizarre and implausible from those who do not believe in those theories.  The implied over-generalization (such as devout Catholic informed by his faith) seems to depict the bias of the authors that sincere Christian would all believe in implausible and bizarre stories of satanic ritual abuse (as an example).   The implied position, that all devout believers would assume satanic cult abuse to be true when "recovered", is in fact is an over-generalization.
       So while the authors recognize that not all people with degrees are not "fringe" players in clinical psychology they appear blind to the fact that not all people of faith are not  "fringe" players in "satanic ritual abuse" accusations.


Original version 3/28/2016 at:
http://www.dysgenics.com/2015/01/06/where-the-witch-hunters-are-satanic-panic-and-mental-health-malpractice/

Another excellent article on where recovered memory therapist have found a new niche to exploit the vulnerable who are insured with "weight loss treatment programs" using "interactive family therapy":
http://www.process.org/discept/2013/05/25/mark-schwartz-accused-of-malpractice-removed-from-castlewood-clinic-staff/
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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.