Michael K Gray wrote:Scented Nectar wrote:Maybe YOU should join feminism. They highly approve of false accusations, especially of child rape. Look up the false memory craze of the 80s and 90s, where any bad dream or depression meant that a quack feminist therapist would tell the patient that she was raped by her father when too young to remember and that that's the root of the bad dreams or depressions. Many families were needlessly destroyed by that.
Back in the early 80s, my wife was firmly convinced by her stupid shrink that she was repeatedly raped by her (deceased) father in a specific month, or months, of a specific year. Her harridan of a mother took it on as truth as well, railing day and night about how you can't trust men and she knew it all along. Until
I asked the mother where the father was at that time. (He was a merchant seaman). It turns out that for the 9 months bounding that period, he was at sea in the northern hemisphere! Couldn't possibly have done it. Yet my wife still kept visiting the fraud of a shrink!
Bahhh
spit!
Trick-cyclists: Pure Voodoo.
b]Ah, fuck....my condolences, and I hope your wife got better.
I just finished Sagan's "Demon Haunted World"...I was pleasantly surprised that he spent a bit of time looking critically at false memory syndrome and the related "satanic ritual abuse" panic of the 80's and 90's. He winds through a narrative taking a look at alien abductees, religious witch hunts, and false memory "abuse" cases through the same perspective, pointing out how eerily similar most of the claims are. I think the only weakness in Sagan's critique is that he , in his usual diplomatic manner, doesn't go quite far enough in his criticisms(he mentioned the known phenomenon of false rape claims as they relate to false memory syndrome, but I think he didn't want to piss off his more liberal supporters), but that might also have been limited by the lack of available data.
I have a bit of personal experience in this area as well, which is part of what informs my extreme dislike of certain manifestations of religion, pseudo-science, and anti-scientific, politicized feminism and other ideologies that seem to idolize victimization. One of my high school girlfriends started confiding to me, after we'd been together for well over a year, that she was an abuse victim. At first, I was lead to believe that one of her uncles had sexually abused her. I still don't know if this one claim is true, but some of her family did seem creepy and suspicious of outsiders(not that that constitutes any kind of evidence of anything). As she revealed more over time, it became a completely insane conspiracy involving multiple uncles, a hidden uncle with powerful criminal connections, years of abduction, rape, and elaborate torture, and a host of other highly unlikely claims. After a while, there was even a "body double" of her to cover her abductions, which ended up being a long-standing but somewhat suppressible Multiple Personality Disorder. At 17, I had no fucking clue that people could seem so very normal and yet be utterly delusional. The other delusionals and mentally unstable people I had known all gave off great flashing warning signs. What really scares the shit out of me is that this person is now a dorm counselor at a well-known christian college...I sure hope she got better first.
None of her family ever mentioned any of this to me, though they all knew. At first, I was mad as hell at them, and thought that their conservative religious views might be making things worse or at least preventing better help from getting to her. They would only allow her to see properly "christian" therapists, who had clearly done no good. I thought maybe her family even believed her wild tales to some degree...but they didn't seem that stupid or crazy. Looking back, given the sorry state of psychoanalysis at the time(late 80's, early 90's), and the somewhat intrusive state child protection system in California, it occurred to me that they may have been making a hard but prudent choice to keep her with the family, although I can't help thinking that their very conservative religious beliefs and taboos didn't help her...but they may not have harmed her much, either. I can't say. I suppose a shit-ton of extra religion-based shaming might have made things worse, but I don't really know how bad it was within her family. They seemed pretty decent.
Since then, I have had an extremely low opinion of people who would encourage any of this sort of thing for profit, or even in a misguided attempt to help people. I've heard of other cases like this, and even seen things like this ruin lives of people accused of crimes so ridiculous they wouldn't even be put in a faked snuff film.
I think all of these topics need a shit-ton of real research, not wild speculation by the gullible and exploitative political ploys or profiteering by the cynical. It may be rare these days, or at least more rare for such delusions to be widely believed and acted on, but the pile of victims, on all sides of these delusions, is huge and reaches back throughout history.
If anyone here at the Pit has any reading recommendations on any of these subjects that go deeper than Sagan's skeptical treatment, I would very much appreciate if you would speak up. I am very interested, but unaware of any solid but accessible work. Any aspect or perspective is ok... psychology, empirical studies, perspectives from social sciences, notes of other similar delusions, perspectives from victims, whatever. Books, studies, youtube videos, blogs, anything.
Thank you in advance if you have any suggestions.
