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         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 14
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         V E R I C O M M / MindNet         "Quid veritas est?"
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    Notes:

    The following is reproduced here with the express permission of
    the publisher.

    Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for
    non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the
    copy remain intact and unedited.

    The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
    views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless
    otherwise noted.

    Editor: Mike Coyle

    Contributing Editors: Walter Bowart
                          Harlan Girard

    Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler

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    False Memory Syndrome Foundation Newsletter

    Vol. 4, No. 2, February 1, 1995

    Report on the Johns Hopkins/False Memory Syndrome Foundation
    Meeting, Baltimore, December 9-11, 1994

    Colin A. Ross, M.D.

    _Colin A. Ross, M.D., author of many hooks and Director of the
    Dissociative Unit at Charter Hospital in Dallas, Texas, has
    several times been the subject of disparaging comments in this
    Newsletter (Vol 2, Nos. 4,5,8). He is often considered to be one
    of the most prominent advocates of treatment for multiple
    personality disorder. He has contributed the following
    communication for the FMS Foundation Newsletter. We are
    delighted to print it. Responses, as usual, will be welcome._

       I am submitting this report simultaneously to the Newsletters
    of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD)
    and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). As immediate
    past president of the ISSD, I was concerned that I might receive
    a hostile reception at the meeting in Baltimore. In fact the
    response to my presence was warm and cordial, with a few
    exceptions, and numerous people said that they were glad to see
    me there, and that the two camps need to begin a conversation
    --the individuals who expressed this view included accused
    fathers, recanters who have successfully sued their therapists,
    wives of accused fathers, lawyers who have won false memory suits,
    psychologists, and psychiatrists.
       The social process and dynamics of the Baltimore meeting were
    identical to those of the multiple personality meetings held in
    Chicago in the mid to late 198O's. Both meetings were in part
    expressions of a social cause, with the audience providing
    standing ovations when stirring orators espoused the group
    political doctrine. The audience at both meetings was a mixture
    of survivors, paraprofessionals, and clinicians, and at both
    meetings victims in the audience could be seen receiving back
    rubs form significant others. At both meetings the speakers were
    predominantly male M.D.s and Ph.D.s. There were survivor forums
    at both meetings, and undisguised cases were presented on stage
    in Baltimore. Both meetings involved a great deal of belief and
    insufficient empiricism.
       The meetings differed demographically, with an upward age
    shift in Baltimore, and many more males in the audience in
    Baltimore. The key difference was a rotation of the
    victim-rescuer-perpetrator triangle--both meetings were focused
    on championing the cause of the victim. In Chicago in 1988 the
    highest-ranking victim was the female MPD patient whose
    perpetrator was a male Satanist and rescuer a therapist, while
    in Baltimore in 1994 the victim was a falsely accused father,
    the rescuer the lawyer, and the perpetrator the MPD therapist.
    The demographics of the roles had shifted but the dynamics were
    identical.
       At both meetings the projected bad self was clearly
    identified--in 1994, ISSD members tend to view the FMSF as
    "perps incorporated" while FMSF members tend to view the ISSD as
    "incompetent hysterics of America." Both these perceptions are
    based on the sociology of rumor, the psychodynamics of
    projection, and overgeneralization from biased samples. Many
    FMSF members, I learned, have attitudes towards me which are
    based on rumor--this is the inverse of the Satanic panic
    analyzed by Victor (1993) and Mulhern (1994).
       ISSD members lend towards an equation according to which FMSF
    membership = perpetrator = denial, while FMSF members tend to
    accept the equation MPD diagnosis = hysteria = false memories =
    patient and family harm. Many professional FMSF members are
    below scholarly standard in terms of knowledge of the
    dissociation literature, while many ISSD members are
    insufficiently aware of the literatures of the imprecision of
    memory, demand characteristics, and coercive persuasion. The two
    organizations are mirror opposites of each other. Both have a
    lot to teach each other, although in both groups there are
    ideologically fixed extremists. Both groups tend to be highly
    critical of the other, but blind to the same logical errors made
    by themselves.
       Many of the Baltimore talks could be given at an ISSD meeting,
    and be well accepted there. ISSD members need to be aware that
    there is a wide diversity of viewpoints among speakers at FMSF
    meetings, as there is in the ISSD--in Baltimore different
    speakers stated that there is no such thing as repression,
    espoused classical psychoanalytical theory, described treatment
    of a retractor based on classical Janetian trauma-dissociation
    theory, and described a variant of cult exit counseling. Much of
    the focus was more on standards of practice than memory issues,
    and I agreed with more than half of what was said.
       One of my goals is to convince FMSF members that the key
    variable of mutual interest should impaired professionals and bad
    therapies. According to substantial but not definitive data
    MPD/DID is a reliable and valid diagnosis according to the DSM-IV
    system rules. The DSM-IV diagnosis of MPD/DID does not require
    adherence to a theory of "robust repression," a reported history
    of sexual abuse, or belief in any particular mental mechanism or
    metaphychological construct. This is analogous to panic
    disorder--establishing that the diagnosis of panic disorder is
    reliable and valid has nothing to do with Freudian theories of
    signal anxiety. The DSM system is atheroretical and
    phenomenological thought, including in the dissociative
    disorders section. The belief that the validity of MPD/DID
    stands or falls based on theories of repression is simply wrong.
       I would like to convince FMSF members that MPD/DID should be
    disconnected from the problem of bad therapies and impaired
    therapists. Until 1991 was a full-time salaried academic in
    Canada--I saw countless examples of wildly incompetent
    polypharmacy with major harm to patients, any of which would be
    grounds for a successful malpractice suit. I'm not convinced
    that the percentage of impaired clinicians is higher in
    dissociative disorders field than in biological psychiatry.
       It is true that there are impaired therapists practicing in
    public dissociative disorders field. I believe, based on my
    clinical experience, that some patients with Satanic ritual
    abuse memories are suffering from DSM-IV dissociative disorder
    not otherwise specified resulting from exposure to coercive
    persuasion and indoctrination in a destructive psychotherapy
    cult. However, the false memories are only a minor component of
    the problem clinically. Why? What is really harming patients and
    families is generic bad clinical practice, and basic ethical and
    boundary violations, It is possible to have false memories in a
    good therapy and no false memories in a bad therapy.
       The problem is not the existence as such, it is how they are
    managed and handled in therapy. I think the FMSF has
    over-attributed the causality of the false memories to therapist
    variables, and over-attributed the problems in bad therapies to
    the memories. On the other side many ISSD members have been
    blind to the damaging effects of their failure to maintain
    therapeutic neutrality with regard to the reality of the
    memories.
       The primary error of FMSF members is that, since someone has
    to be bad, the family can only achieve reconciliation if it is
    the therapist who caused the problems.
       The primary error of ISSD members is that the FMSF crowd are
    only interested in protecting perpetrators. This simply isn't
    true. Both groups overgeneralize from subsamples within the
    opposing population. My motive for going to the Baltimore
    meeting was in part my knowledge that meeting someone
    face-to-face is a powerful counter to projection of badness. It
    is time that psychiatrists and psychologists in both camps sought
    a common ground, and took an empirical and scientific approach to
    complex problems. The mental health field suffers from
    MPD/DID--the ISSD and FMSF are "alters" within a larger system
    who are refusing to talk to each other or inhabit the same body.
    This does not work inside individuals, nor does in work in the
    mental health field.

    Mulhern, S. (1994). Satanism, ritual abuse, and multiple
    personality disorder: a sociohistorical perspective.
    _International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis_,
    42: 265-288

    Victor, J,S. (1993). _Satanic Panic. The Creation of a
    Contemporary Legend_. Chicago: Open Court.

    ---

    [A note about the FMS Newsletter from the Pamela Freyd.]

      "This newsletter was written for an audience of people who
    believe that they have been falsely accused of a terrible crime
    which no one will investigate and for professionals who are
    urged to critically examine their own assumptions, their own
    practice, and the ability of the mental health community to
    monitor itself. The newsletter is not intended to undermine
    people who believe that they have "recovered memories." FMSF has
    never questioned the wide extent nor the terrible effects of
    child abuse and neglect. There are many people who have been
    abused in the past who are only now finding their voice about it.
    That is a welcome improvement. Rather the concern is to separate
    the political issues, the scientific issues and the therapy
    issues that have become so entangled. We wish to inform people
    about scientific information on the nature of memory and
    influence, not to take away anyone's memories. We cannot know the
    truth or falsity of anyone's memories, neither accusers nor
    accused. We are concerned that all people, professionals, clients
    and others affected by the "recovered memories" reflect
    critically on the processes used to elicit them. Some memories
    are surely true, some confabulated, and some false. That is the
    nature of memory. Misremembering is common. Because
    misremembering is so common, we urge all people to examine
    critically "memories" of things for which there is no empirical
    evidence: past lives, space alien abduction abuse,
    intergenerational satanic conspiracy abuse, and some claims of
    childhood incest."

                                      - Pamela Freyd, Ph.D.
                                        Executive Director, FMSF

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