Thursday, October 1, 2015

Video: Therapy Makes Money Harming Families


      A lecture by the author of "Sybil Exposed".  The book she has written is deeply researched and she has a firm understanding of current psychological perspectives on the issues relating to what was once known as repressed memories and multiple personality disorder.
    The book "Sybil" sold 7 million copies and the movie was seen by a fifth of the adult population in 1976.  The publisher and movie sponsors called it a "true story" and the story had a huge impact on the culture of the United States.  Multiple Personality Disorder, had less than 36 cases previously diagnosed over 100 years suddenly the diagnosis jumped to tens of thousands per year into the 1980's and 1990's.   Tens of thousands suddenly poured into therapist offices with the suggestions and assumptions of the movie content.  Many therapists were trained by the author of the book to use techniques that nurtured pseudo memories. 
     In the next 20 years thousands of innocents were jailed, tens of thousands of families destroyed, livelihoods lost all due to the impact of this story.  The book and movie continues to feed a national hysteria even today that continues to claim widespread child abuse, repressed memories and disociative identity disorder even as the scientifically validated evidence overwhelmingly fails to support any of the claims made by "repressed memory" and "'multiple personality" believers.
       The end of the video has a question and answer segment that is of interest.  She wonders aloud why the relationship between Shirley Mason and Dr. Wilbur developed and was so close.  She mentions that Dr. Wilbur had no children and no family close to her and that she may have wanted a family.  The client Shirley Mason became like a daughter for whom she could care.  The process of demonizing Shirley's mother actually strengthened the therapist and friend as a type of surrogate mother and so met the personal need of an aging and lonely therapist to be wanted  The idea that the therapist may have personal problems, is lonely and without family became a motivation for nurturing false memories in her client and friend.                    
                   National Public Radio:  The Sybil Story Truth
                   New York Post:  Sybil is One Big Psych Out
                   BOOK:  Sybil Exposed

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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 99362, USA

Video: True Horror Flick Scarier than a Fantasy Horror Flick

Regression
by Ethan Hawke

This is a fabulous, thoughtful AND well done movie with great acting. The story is actually a composite of many actual stories with major features matching historically verifiable events of two cases in the state of Washington (mostly the Paul Ingram story but features of "Wenatchee Witchhunt" scandal 1994-1995 in it as well). It is a true horror flick. My guess is that it is too scary for most because it can happen at any time to any one (including even very good families). The central actors do a fabulous job. Ethan Hawke plays a passionate, rough, quick and dedicated detective weho seeks to imprison abusers of children. Emma Watson plays the downtrodden victim and accuser in an abusive family said to be involved in a satanic cult. 

      The real strength of this movie is how the depicted motivations of so many people who rally to treat fantasies as fact facilitating repeated untold injustices.  The mass media are saturated with hyper-sexualized images in entertainment, in advertising along and often in sensationalized news reports of shocking stories that rivet watchers (and the ever shrinking number of readers) to make money.  District Attorneys running for office need emotional laden cases that quickly persuade juries of guilt without the need for corroboration or physical evidence.  Police officers are quick to restrain and jail all "threats" to women and children with a vengeance because of a natural inclination to protect ongoing victims (whether accusations are true or not).  Police and social services supervisors can ask for ever bigger budgets and larger staffs in order to meet the needs of  more "victims".  Therapists using recovered memory therapy produce helpless clients who need ever more therapy.  The same therapists can also generate contracts with police to "unlock" the hidden "memories" that provide police with more details by "uncovering repressed memories"(generating more professional income).  Accusers often need someone who can be responsible for the tragic decisions they have made in their own lives and repressed memories provide someone to blame.  Clergy need to assure church members that they will act compassionately to protect victims from satan using the resources available.  In this movie the clergy provide a safe home for the accuser.  All of these motivations have an interest in treating every accusation of incest and satanic abuse as true even if bizarre, unsupported by physical evidence and factually false.  Finally for those who know little, except what they see on the news, what child (or minor) would make up something so horrid about there family if it were not true?  The assumption of pure motivation by the accuser trumps the assumption of innocence of the accused.    In the case of childhood sexual abuse (always manifested in the Satanic Ritual Abuse) the accused is not presumed innocent by any party!
       Finally there is the conviction and jailing of innocent fathers, who were not perfect fathers, and often willingly accept plea bargains that allow their falsely accusing children to go free.  In this movie the father facilitates a better and more comfortable life of his daughter in a church community that he admires.  This movie clearly depicts the systematic and complicated confluence of motivations that bring about injustice.
       This is not just entertainment because it is also a literary work.  The main characters change as a result of the events depicted.  The viewer will change too and come away with a deeper understanding of our culture and who we are.  It may not be comfortable for many to think about the issues raised in the movie.  Many people have been impacted by the "recovered memory movement" and the cultural myth of "repressed memories".  Those in anyway connected to accusations arising from "repressed memories" should see this movie as soon as possible.  The police commander (in the movie) summed it up when he stated the scariest part was not only that the crack lead detective believed the accusations,  but that "we all believed the accusations."
       The lone weakness of the movie that the accuser is depicted as consciously manipulating events and using suggestive techniques to foster the hysteria. In most events the accuser herself (overwhelming majority of accusers are female) is undergoing recovered memory therapy or regression therapy and actually believes the fantasies (often while on medication). The movie is, I think, trying to make a clear statement that the recollections and fantasies are not factual so that the point of the movie is more forcefully made. I keep the 5 star rating for what it does do so well.
     This movie sheds light on a very dark era in our mental health industry. The movie is so well done that it is not classified as a "dramatized documentary" but as a horror/detective/thriller.  The movie only lightly engages the contribution of psychotropic medications to the production of vivid fantasies but, alas, the movie already does so much.

     Due to personal experience that struck our family I have read over a dozen books, many dozens of articles (academic research, legal reviews and popular writings) and viewed an extensive library of videos on "false memories" ("repressed memories" or "pseudo memories"). When I sat down to watch this movie I was prepared to be showered with the standard media nonsense about "repressed memories" unlocking "facts" from decades earlier or some similar fairy tale. I was wrong.
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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 99362, USA

Video: Modern Media Induced Hysteria Documented

        In the history of mankind the hysteria produced by popular media in the 1950-90's has been rarely matched.  The unprecedented dominance just a handful of national outlets in the United States meant that a large number of naive, suggestible, medicated and vulnerable people were exposed to entertainment which could claim to be "true" or "factual" when in fact the entertainment might be neither.
        A popular book (1973) and award winning movie (1976, 2007)  depicted a case of abuse, repressed memories (RM) and multiple personality disorder (MPD) as a true story.  The book and movie catapulted repressed memory and multiple personality disorder from less that 3 dozen cases a year in the United States to tens of thousands of cases in the 1980's & 90's.  Peer therapists asserted, from early on, that this story was a fraud but were ignored (documentaries done at the time revealed peer therapist doubts).  The entertainment industry recognized that the sensationalized account of the therapist turned author was much more alluring and profitable.  Following the passing of both the client and the therapist personal communication of the client were made public (the therapist had her personal communications destroyed).   In 2011 personal letters by Shirley Mason (real client) confirmed that the story was a fraud that she and her therapist perpetrated for personal gain.  The documentary "Debunking Sybil and MPD" addresses the fraud prior to the confirmation with great effect.  


Other videos:  
     News Segment:  "The Sybil Hoax"  (Gallagher)            [9 min]
     News Segment:  "The Sybil Hoax"  (NY Times)            [9 min]      
     Full Lecture:  "Sybil Exposed-Debbie Nathan"         [55 min]
     Debbie Nathan, author of "Sybil Exposed", reviewed the evidence and read all the personal letters in the "John Jay Criminal Library" where a letter by "Sybil" (actually Shirley Mason) admits the event was a fraud shared by her, the therapist and here roommate.
  
          This documentary is almost entirely the clients and therapists talking who believe in the assumptions and diagnosis of multiple personality disorder.  The psychiatric treatment of people diagnosed with "dissociative identity disorder" once known as "multiple personality disorder" (MPD).   False memories are specifically addressed for less than 4-6 minutes of the 48 minute film.  The information that debunks the remaining 40 minutes is rather compelling.  The showing of "Sybil" to fifth of the adults in the United States and the epidemic of child incest accusations, claims of repression and diagnosis of multiple personality is now used as a case study for a the media can generate manufactured hysteria based on a false premise.
       "Sybil" was made for TV movie that was initially shown on NBC over two nights in 1976 had a huge viewership.  The movie won Emmy Awards for acting, music and outstanding writing.  Many different editions have been shown since and the a VHS tape of the movie was hugely popular in the 1980's.  It was distributed widely and estimates of viewership top 100 million.  It is still distributed.  An additional remake of the movie was made in 2007 depicting the same story as "true" (now known to be  a fraud).
       Prior to the hugely popular book "Sybil" (1973) and followup popular movie on her life there were very few diagnosis for "Multiple Personality Disorder" (less than 3 dozen per year).  High Schools began to read the book.  Huge numbers of people saw the movie.  Suddenly therapists nationwide were faced with clients streaming into their offices that claimed similar symptoms and therapists sought training from the heroine therapist book author who was seen now as an expert.  All therapists and sought to emulate the heroine therapist depicted in the movie.
       The movie provided suggestive scenes and an explanation for the missing memories was said to be "repressions" (the word does not appear in the manual used by psychiatrists of psychologist).  A person who saw the movie and was suggestible or in a suggestible state might then go to a therapist who had also seen the movie.  The client and therapist had been  influenced by errant assumptions in a movie depicted and stated to be based on a true story.  The results were very often tragic for the client and for the loving family the client might have had.
        A peer of the therapist, who had also counseled Sybil, shared in this documentary how Sybil doubted the true existence of the "multiple personality disorder" when he counseled her at the time.  He implies that the treating psychiatrist was misleading or even fraudulent at the time of he authorship of the book depicting the story and the followup movie royalties and training sessions she provided.  He confronted Dr. Wilbur but was rebuffed with "The publisher would not publish the story unless it were true."
      Her popular book and films meant income for the publishing house, income for the broadcasting company and huge increases in business for every therapist.  The financial incentive for the hysteria was huge.  The movie depicting the therapist as a hero meant that all therapists all had a larger market of willing purchasers who wanted a therapist like the one in the movie!

    Since 2011 the fact that this story is a fraud has surfaced to support the thesis of this documentary.  The real name of "Sybil" is Shirley Mason.  The real psychiatrist that provided the therapy to Shirley Mason is Connie Wilbur.  The New York Post revealed:

"One day, Shirley started talking about blackouts in which, she claimed, she became others with various names and personalities — Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Vicky, etc.

Fascinated, Connie offered, “Would you like to earn some money?” She suggested that her patient could be the subject of a book. Connie offered to pay Shirley’s medical-school tuition and living expenses.

The personality split was a lie, Shirley confessed in a five-page 1958 letter that sits in the archives at John Jay [Criminal Justice Library]. She said she was “none of the things I have pretended to be.”

Shirley continued, “I do not have any multiple personalities … I do not even have a ‘double’ … I am all of them. I have essentially been lying … as trying to show you I felt I needed help … Quite thrilling. Got me a lot of attention.”"

                   National Public Radio:  The Sybil Story Truth
                   New York Post:  Sybil is One Big Psych Out
                   BOOK:  Sybil Exposed

     Some imply that the American Psychological Association has responded to the crisis of fraudulent perpetration by renaming "Multiple Personality Disorder" as "Dissociative Identity Disorder".  They now catalog "repressed memory" as "dissociative amnesia".
     The original book and movie "Sybil" set into motion waves of hysteria that fueled the imagination and eventually influenced the "do it yourself therapy books" that helped bypass those expensive therapies.  In the 1980's and 1990's the idea that widespread child abuse was the cause of discomforts, anxieties, overeating, lack of sleep and depression among the many other speculated symptoms of child abuse.   The proof was often provided by repressed memories that had no physical or corroborating evidence decades after the alleged abuse.  Accusers ended up tortured by false memories and isolated from the very families that could help them.  Thousands of innocent people were jailed and convicted, tens of thousands were accused and suffered untold damage to reputations and livelihoods.  Hundreds of thousands experienced familial destruction.  The echoes of this fraud are still being experienced today.

    It is now possible that new, government subsidized and more widespread insurance policies will fan the flames of fraud and continue to employ those willing to exploit the vulnerable.  This could mean ever bigger waves of whatever the latest hysteria might be.

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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 99362, USA

Video: Documentary Divided Memories (1)


35:02 Minute Length
PBS Frontline Documentary by Ofra Bikel. Originally aired April, 1995.
Part 1 (of 2): The Hunt for Memories

My favorite part of this video is the commentary by Dr. Paul Simpson who actually used regression memory therapy as a counselor for a time.  Dr. Simpson (wrote a book called "Second Thoughts") who was surrounded by a counselors in the hospital he worked at using recovered memory therapy.   After investigation and analysis he doubted that the therapy recovered truthful memories and he recognized that the therapy made the clients less functional. In the panic and hysteria of the 1990's he was a voice of sanity and reason.  A main stream media film that asserts truth over the popular opinion of the time.

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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.
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,
Location: Walla Walla, WA 99362, USA
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