FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1996

The audience was shown a film clip of a crying woman relating how she had been brutally abused by a Satanic cult. The clip was from a (Christian) training video for therapists dealing with the phenomenon known as Satanic Ritual Abuse (aka Ritualistic Abuse). Dr Mulhern announced she would reveal the “trick” of the film clip and the woman’s story. We were then shown the same woman, in scenes not included in the training video, acting out in squeaky voices different “personalities”. She was someone who had been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder. So how “true” was her satanist story? {Or would the video-editing Christians justify their selectiveness by saying that the SRA caused her MPD?]

There was a boost in MPD cases in America at the end of the 1980’s. There is indeed such a phenomena as MPD, but from the 1980’s it was not a case of someone with the disorder being brought in to therapy. A situation arose where eighty per cent of the cases were not diagnosed until the “patients” went in to therapy. The clinicians were demanding it. Twenty-five per cent of the US population is “highly hypnotizeable” . The patients enjoyed acting out their ‘embodiments’. It was an activity. Between the clinicians and the patients there arose a kind of secular possession cult.

SRA is not a corpus of stories about experienced events. The social construction and public endorsement of the corpus of stories is the event itself.

Definition: SRA claims are contemporary reworkings of an archaic conspirational motif.

[cf academic works on witch-trials]

The 1988 study: Hypothesis: The cult described exists only insofar as it’s talked about. There are two cohorts: (1) The core elite - the mental health professionals and (2) The eyewitnesses - the least reliable types of people available - young children, adult clients of mental health services, people who have difficulty distinguishing mental events and physical events.

The “victims” are not saying the same things, but are heard in the same way. “Victims” only say the same things if

1. They have been exposed to other “victims” stories
2. Editing is imposed on their emerging narrative by therapists (e.g. the therapists cut out references to floating priests, rationalizing it away as drugs fed to the “victim” by the “cult”)
3. The media amplifies the standardized narrative

Both cohorts are highly suggestible.

The model: It is not coming from La Vey’s Church Of Satan, or from the Process, or from ROSEMARY’S BABY or from the occult, but from post-war clinicians with combat veteran clients, who turned from Freudian analysis to hypnosis. There is a good side to hypnosis - see Huston’s classic 1947 documentary LET THERE BE LIGHT [which, incidentally, involves the same hypnotist that hypnotized Betty & Barney Hill]. There is also a bad side. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

Clinicians have a confidence in hypnotism. But the simplified version of a late nineteenth century trauma/dissociation model is the lynchpin of SRA claims.

Violence & evidence: There is an inverse relationship between the character of the allegations and the amount of corroborative material evidence. Therapists present the absence of physical evidence as the proof of the skills of the conspirators. The therapists in these kinds of cases seek to impose a new form of evidence.

Therapeutic evidence:

1. Violence of reactions
2. Stories in vivid detail
3. “Body memories” such as spontaneous bleeding (even though ten per cent of the US population are capable of this)
4. Patients who “never met” say the same thing

Adult cases: The majority had previously been diagnosed with MPD

Both cohorts display psychopathological symptoms.

The 1988 report remarked on the possible evolution of the phenomenon: that the cohorts would reach critical mass. That there would be a revolt against the professionals by some patients and they would go to the courts for relief.

Causes? Dissociation theory - war neurosis of 1940’s
- anti-cult movements of 1960’s (hippy panic) Christian groups want to bring people back to the fold. Psychology went after the cults anyway because of their recruiting techniques (“brainwashing”).

But then the brainwashing moved from cult to therapy session!

The model (underlined above): Robots programming robots. The Abusers have Satanic alter-egos. Their memories become repressed, and so do the victims’. That’s why the abused never know they have been abused until they are hypnotized, and why the Abusers never know they have been Abusers for years. The theory is that the Abusers are half-people. Any one of us could be one of “them”. Everyone can potentially go to the sabbat/slaughter WITHOUT KNOWING IT.

1996 report. An analysis of Ritualistic and Religion-related Child Abuse allegations. (“Religion-related” refers to exorcisms etc.)

- Descriptions of religion-related abuse are the same.
- Descriptions of SRA differ from case to case. Adult versions are always worse.
- Adult cases are first disclosed in therapy.
- There is always a connection with therapists attending workshops.
- The majority of adult cases had been diagnosed as MPD or PTSD.
- Some acts of child abuse possibly qualify as ‘ritualistic’.

(1) Acceptance of age regression hypnosis
(2) Acceptance of MPD
(3) Acceptance of Repressed Memories

The future is dictated by economics. You cannot sue your parents if they are alter-Satanists. So who’s going to pay for all that therapy?

End-note: Alien abduction [Dr Mulhern was apparently amused that the Abductees seemed to be the new version of the Contactees]. Trance techniques are FUN. Regresssion hypnotherapy activates mental images from what one reads or from childhood experiences. Hypnosis does not reactivate HISTORICAL memory. It allows you to do things with your body in a trance. It is not a tape recorder. Without the clinician in the “abduction” cases, you would not get the material. But you cannot sue an alien.

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