Prime Time Replay:
Richard Ofshe
on Recovered Memory Syndrome
MsgId: *brain_storm(2)
Date: Fri Oct 25 21:56:32 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Good evening and welcome to Brainstorms. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Harary, and our guest tonight is sociologist Richard Ofshe, Ph.D., member of the three-person reporting and research team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in the name of the Point Reyes Light. Dr. Ofshe describes his recently published controversial book about recovered memory therapy, MAKING MONSTERS, as a volume that is "widely praised in the scientific community and uniformly hated by recovered memory therapists."As one of the country's most well-known critics of recovered memory therapy, Richard Ofshe calls this practice, "THE psychiatric quackery of the 20th Century." He forcefully makes the case that "recovered memory therapists subject their patients to treatment procedures that amount to little more than torture."
Says Ofshe: "In recovered memory therapy, patients are made to attempt to fully experience rape and the worst sorts of human degradation believing that 'reliving' these supposed traumas is a necessary step to mental health. Since the traumas exist initially in the mind of the therapist and then are transferred to the belief system of the patient, the patients are reliving nothing and are manipulated. In the process, they undergo the closest thing to rape that can be accomplished without actually touching someone."
Good evening Dr. Ofshe. Welcome to BRAINSTORMS.
MsgId: *brain_storm(6)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:01:45 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Dr. Ofshe has been called away from his computer for a short while. Since this chat is open, we welcome guests to post questions or move the discussion forward on their own.
MsgId: *brain_storm(7)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:04:48 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
I wonder if any one out there has ever attempted, in any sense, to recover memories that were irretrievably lost?
MsgId: *brain_storm(8)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:04:49 EDT 1996
From: guest At: 205.229.228.57
Good eve Dr. How can repressed memories be distinguished from "suggested" memories? Often, the questions are leading and can develop a life of their own when under hypnosis. Or.. even planted
MsgId: *brain_storm(9)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:07:44 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The answer is coming --one moment.
MsgId: *brain_storm(10)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:10:04 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The question presumes you can distinguish between these things. The question presumes both these things DO exist. But repessed memories simply do not exist. --Richard Olfshe
MsgId: *brain_storm(11)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:10:45 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The idea of repressed memory is part of the Freudian Fraud --misdirected psychotherapy.
MsgId: *brain_storm(12)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:11:18 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Again--audience, please ask your questions.
MsgId: *brain_storm(13)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:12:35 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Let's take a step back a minute. We've all heard the incredible claims heard about recovered memory --adults suddenly remembering horrible tales of abuse, sexual and even satanic. --KH (cont)
MsgId: *brain_storm(14)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:13:21 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
We've heard tales of people being hypnotized and supposedly remembering having been abducted by aliens. KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(15)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:13:48 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
What's going on here? KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(16)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:15:15 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Poorly trained psychotherapists are using tools of influence badly. They're armed with a combination of ignorance about how the human mind works and powerful techniques. They are as dangerous as a six-year-old with a loaded machine gun. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(17)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:16:13 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Can you describe some of those techniques and tell us why they're dangerous? --KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(18)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:17:47 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The place to start is with the recognition that they are claiming to be professionals who are providing the public with reliable, empirical information. They claim they are providing a service that is proven. But for recovered memory therapy, none of the above is true. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(19)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:19:02 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
They also tell people they can ease their pain, as if they know what causes it. They also use hypnotic techniques --relaxation, guided visualization-- and don't let the patients know they are being hypnotized. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(20)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:20:09 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
These patients think they are relaxing, thus getting help in enhancing their memory. In fact, they are in a hypnotic trance, and influenced with images that they then interpret as actual memory.
MsgId: *brain_storm(21)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:21:12 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
So it sounds like you're talking about people being subjected to the intense suggestion of the hypnotist.--KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(22)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:22:17 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Quite often the hypnotist does not even know that he or she is doing hypnosis. By and large, people who recover recovered memory therapy shouldn't be trusted to walk their dogs.
MsgId: *brain_storm(23)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:23:20 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Can you tell us about some of the specific cases in this area that you find especially troubling --I'm sure our audience is also curious about how you chose the title of your book --Making Monsters.
MsgId: *brain_storm(24)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:25:36 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The book title was chosen because the therapy influences the patient to see his or her parents as the worst kind of monster. The book deals mostly with claims of sexual and satanic abuse (sexual abuse with robes) on this planet and in this lifetime--RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(25)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:27:12 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Typically, the therapist causes the child to see the parent as a monster. And parents then find themselves being attacked by a monster bent upon destroying their lives. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(26)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:28:00 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Sometimes the parents go to jail; sometimes their life savings are wasted. Their relationships with their children are always destroyed.
MsgId: *brain_storm(27)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:31:29 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The most famous of the cases involved Eileen Franklin, who was convinced by her therapist that she was recovering the memory of seeing her father kill a childhood friend twenty years earlier. She also developed a belief that her father had been raping her throughout her childhood, with her mother's knowledge, and this explained why her life took such disappointing turns --leading her through prositution and into an awful marriage.
MsgId: *brain_storm(28)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:32:47 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Based on Eileen Franklin's testimony, George Franklin was convicted and spent six years in prison. Until his life sentence was reversed and his conviction thrown out. --RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(29)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:33:34 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
In making monsters we analyze Eileen's therapy and analyze how she had gotten to believe this nonsense. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(30)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:35:46 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
She was hypnotized in her therapy. And, it turned out, she learned the facts of the case from the newspapers. She corrected her initial, gross errors, about the facts of the case by reading the newspapers. About a year and a half after we published Making Monsters, Eileen's sister admitted in court that she had lied, and that both she and Eileen had been hypnotized by the therapist. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(31)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:37:08 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
How to you respond to critics who say that there is a lot of sexual abuse going on out there --and that attributing it all to false memories allows the perps to get away with it?
MsgId: *brain_storm(32)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:39:13 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
First, recovered memory allegations about sexual abuse constitute just a tiny percent of the total allegations of sexual abuse. We are talking about accusations of sexual abuse going on for decades that the accuser would have fervently denied prior to going into therapy --RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(33)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:40:59 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The only people who promote the idea that criticism of recovered memory therapy is criticism of any claims of sexual abuse are recovered memory therapists and their patients --who cannot face the fact that they have destroyed their lives because they put their faith in an incompetent--RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(34)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:42:07 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
I notice you draw a relationship between recovered memory and claims surrounding multiple personality disorder. KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(35)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:43:41 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
The connection is that the way in which people are trained to role play multiple personality disorders starts with the creation of recovered memories of sexual abuse --and then is developed into the notion that their personalities are split into hundreds of alters.RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(36)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:45:01 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Multiple personality disorder comes about through the very same techniques of persuasion as recovered memory therapy; these people are convinced they led a life they had no knowledge of before they entered therapy. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(37)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:46:41 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
So your saying none of the claims of multiple personality --like the case of Cris Sizemore, better known as the Three Faces of Eve-- have any basis in reality? KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(38)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:48:49 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Never in the history of medicine has anyone ever observed an alleged multiple personality disordered patient being MPD before treatment. All cases of MPD are identified after treatment begins. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(39)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:50:09 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
"Eve" supposedly had an alter personality who would get up and perform in nightclubs and lead a flamboyant complex life involving people unknown to Eve. All of this could have been easily proven if it were real. It was never proven. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(40)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:50:35 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
It gets better --RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(41)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:53:01 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Chris Sizemore wrote her own book after the Three Phases of Eve came ou; and it shows that as the psychogosist's expectation for a Multiple Personality changed, Chris's alleged symptoms changed too. I'm not suggesting she was faking --I'm just saying her symptoms, definitely derived from a serious, garden variety mental disorder, were shaped by the expectations of the people who treated her. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(42)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:54:49 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
She went from a classic, 19th century perception of a multiple --someone with separate and complex lives for each personality-- to someone who thought that her multiple personalities were nothing more than facets of an identity. Meaning --one alter personality existed only by wearing purple; another existed only by never taking the some route twice. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(43)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:55:56 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
As the psychiatric community decided it expected to find hundreds, if not thousands, of personality fragments, Eve's symptoms reflected these beliefs.RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(44)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:56:47 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
With the publication of Sybil in 1973, we saw the introduction of the idea that multiple personality disorder was caused by horrendous sexual abuse. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(45)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:57:51 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Before Sybil sexual abuse was never suggested as the cause of multiplicity. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(46)
Date: Fri Oct 25 22:59:01 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
After Sybil, therapists expected to find horrible sexual abuse in their patient's histories --and did, using hypnosis. They created exactly the recovered memories that they expected. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(47)
Date: Fri Oct 25 23:00:34 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Dr. Ofshe, here's a final question: How do you relate the widespread claims we often hear about Satanic cults operating on a massive scale to the recovered memory movement? Are these claims complete nonsense? KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(48)
Date: Fri Oct 25 23:03:12 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Not only do I believe that --so does the FBI. And so do researchers, who have tried to find evidence of even one instance in which the baby-eating, sexually-abusive Satanic cults actually exist. But idiotic recovered memory therapists were producing thousands of patients who sincerely believed that they images of Satanic Ritual Abuse (indused by the therapists) were real, they made police reports. Thousands of cases have been investigated, but not one has produced evidence that this is real. Ro
MsgId: *brain_storm(49)
Date: Fri Oct 25 23:04:25 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Thank you, Dr. Ofshe, for a fascinating and important discussion. Let me mention once again your book, Making Monsters, published by the University of California Press and available right here, in our Bookstore of the Omniverse. KH
MsgId: *brain_storm(50)
Date: Fri Oct 25 23:04:51 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
Thank you, Keith. RO
MsgId: *brain_storm(51)
Date: Fri Oct 25 23:05:54 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary(Moderator)_and_Richard_Ofshe At: 168.100.204.58
I'm your host, Dr. Keith Harary. Please join us again next week for another fascinating exploration of the boundaries of the mind, the brain, and human behavior. Goodnight for Brainstorms. KH
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