From: romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu!prodigy.com!BSAK18A (MR ROGER L WHITE)

From Omni - Feb. 1995
Remembering the Past
by Mark Pendergrast

In her 1972 landmark book, Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler noted that,
"Today, more women are seeking psychiatric help and being hospitalized than
at any other time in history." Today, that is truer than ever. Chesler
attributed this intensification of an old trend to the "help-seeking"
nature of the learned female role, the oppression of women, and
role-confusion in the modern age.

The female "career" as a psychiatric patient identified by Chesler has a
long history, with women usually displaying the symptoms expected of them,
ranging from depression to paranoia. Chesler tacitly acknowledges this
history with the wry observation, "No longer are women sacrificed as
voluntary or involuntary witches. They are, instead, taught to sacrifice
themselves for newly named heresies."

One of these newly named diagnoses, amazingly popular since the publication
of Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass in 1988, is that of Incest Survivor.
Millions of women--and some men--have come to believe that all of their
"symptoms" (depression, panic attacks, poor relationships, sexual
dysfunction, bodily pangs, nightmares, eating disorders, and other life
problems) stem from long-forgotten sexual abuse. Only be recalling and
reliving these repressed trauma memories can they be truely healed.

For centuries in Western cultures, women have often suffered from bizarre
psychosomatic ailments aided and abetted by the "experts" of the era.
Because of societal bias, females, considered the "weaker vessel," have
traditionally been expected to act out the role of the hysteric more often
than males. Women, almost univerally repressed, abused, and powerless to do
much about it, have often conformed to the roles expected of them, which at
least allowed them  sympathetic attention and an emotional outlet for their
suppressed and often justifiable rage. Little seems to have changed. The
only thing that is relatively new about the Incest Survivor movement is its
particularly awful slant-- the virulent accusations against parents and
other early caregivers, and the complete rewriting of the personal past.

I speak from experience. My own daughters cut off all contact with me after
accusing me of unspecified sexual abuse. As a consequence, I spent over two
years investigating recovered memory therapy (RMT). I cannot possibly
summarize here all of the significant findings I detail in a 600-page book
on the subject: Victims of Memory. Suffice it to say, however, that there
is no scientific evidence to support the concept of "massive repression"
--the idea that human beings can or do completely forget years of abuse,
only to recall it years later in therapy. On the contrary, there is a great
deal of evidence which confirms that when a therapist suggests the
possibility of repressed incest memories, confabulations (the
psychologist's term for illusory memories)  can easily result.

To question the validity of massive repression or the efficacy of RMT is
not to deny the existence of real abuse. I am well aware of the horrors of
real incest-- but no one forgets years of abuse. the real problem for
incest victims is their inability to forget.

One of the tragic ironies of this movement is its supposed affiliation with
feminism. I have interviewed scores of self-identified "survivors' who have
recalled abuse memories. They are firmly convinced that, as they have been
told repeatedly, "You have to get worse before you get better."
They are thrown into a psychological hell in which they frequently lose
their self-confidence, jobs, marriages, children and sometimes their
sanity-- all in the name of "healing."

Thought most therapists who help extract these "memories" truly believe
that they are helping their patients, they do so by making women feel
helpless, dependent, wounded, incomplete, and fundamentally flawed. Does
that sound familiar? Women's lives are being harmed by a movement that
feminists should abhor.

Back in 1972, Phyllis Chesler issued a prophetic warning about radical
treatments that promise to help female patients in some special way.
"People and social structures change slowly if at all," she wrote, adding
that "most people simply obey new myths, as inevitably as they did old
myths." Consequently, she was both excited and disturbed by the
possibilities she saw in feminist psychotherapy. It could, she feared,
simply turn into "authoritarianism with a new party line."

Unfortunately, with the advent of RMT, that is just what has happened. With
women's mental health on the line, let us hope that a new brand of feminist
therapist will blow the whistle on the disastrous social phenomenon.

