FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1997

Up until the 1960's minority religions in the United States enjoyed freedom. In the 1960's public perception changed after the counterculture movement, e.g. the Moonie mass marriages. There was concern regarding religious groups from middle class parents. In the sixties the revival of Christian Fundamentalist Evangelicalism began in the US. The "counter cult" movement includes Evangelical groups. "Deliverance" is the Protestant form of exorcism and is taken in "Deliverance Ministries" to be quasi-medical. These Ministries focused on "occult sins" (there was a popular book at the time called PIGS IN THE PARLOR which was about "how demons enter"). They responded to the youth counterculture with a campaign to convert. They were looking at the beliefs and practises of "cults" and not the structure. However, the middle class parents mentioned above were not concerned about "cults" from an Evangelical perspective. They looked to psychology.

There were clinicians who were interested in the idea of "brainwashing" (a term coined by journalist Ed Hunter). Margaret Thaler Singer had written a book called CULTS IN OUR MIDST, which contained the idea of "mind control." She was drawing on the work of Robert Lifton on "thought reform," which was based on work in China. The idea was that "mind control" was developed by the Communist Russians and refined by the Chinese, using sophisticated Pavlovian psychological techniques, such as violent coercion. However, "brainwashing" as a psychological model didn't stick in the clinical community. Singer re-adapted the model at the request of the anti-cult movement. Her idea was that in "thought reform" physical coercion was not necessary., that manipulation could be done by using guilt and hypnosis etc. - and that the effects of such methods were more enduring.

Any group or "cult" could be defined by three factors. (1) A persuasive leader that was "charismatic", (2) a power structure that was authoritarian and exclusive and (3) the use of persuasion, "thought reform" and "brainwashing": members required to undergo a change in lifestyle, the "cult" being totalistic and all-encompassing in controlling members' behaviour and worldview.

(note: Lifton said that one person's cult is another's religion)

The problem with the model is that the social-psychological definition of "cults" enjoys scientific respectability but the framework is not scientific. The portrait of "cults" is generic. "Cults" are seen as harmful or threatening. The power of "cult" leaders in exaggerated and the vulnerability of recruits is exaggerated also. "Cult" leaders are seen as crazed, psychologically unstable and motivated by greed. Do all "cults" have an irresistible leader with dupes whose will he replaces? In the word "cult" everyone is tied into the same basket. There are alternative terms to that word. (1) New religious movement, (2) Charismatic group, (3) Sect.

In the late 1960's after the emergence of the "brainwashing" model, Anton La Vey of the Church of Satan made the news and this was followed by the Manson/Tate case. "Cult" was now seen as deviant or criminal. The image of the Satanic Cult was reinforced in the 1970's. There was a popular book called THE SATAN SELLER by Mike Warnke with Dave Balsiger and Les Jones. Warnke said he was a high priest of a Satanic Cult, and his anecdotes were drawn from the world of Fundamentalism. Warnke wanted a career as a professional Evangelist. His book said that the Satanic Cult was an international conspiracy. L'Amour de David and the Children of God also proved a push behind the anti-cult movement in the 1970's. Then the Jonestown incident in 1978 was a tragic "cult" event, a "suicide" that was probably a massacre. The "brainwashing" model was completely reinforced. Many people in Jonestown/the People's Temple had been underprivileged people who had wanted a better life... their search for a better life has been dismissed and they are seen as robots.

Socially in America, public awareness of child abuse in the 1960's was medicalised by a group of paediatricians and socially reconstructed as a medical problem. This created a new socio-economic centre in the USA. In the 1970's "child abuse" evolved into "sexual abuse": a problem raised by Feminism, not the medical profession. It was a political issue. In 1974 an Act of Congress - the Mondale Act - provided a definition of "sexual abuse". Each State had legislation mandating the report of any suspected abuse. However, the concept of "sexual abuse" was more complicated than "physical abuse." The legal system needed evidence, especially when the person claiming to be abused sexually was an adult "survivor" (but an adult with real memories of the abuse). Therefore the Feminist goal of criminalising "sexual abuse" was failing. This led to the subsequent phenomena... In the 1970's the book SYBIL came out, explaining "the Family Tree: the Hierarchy of the Sixteen Selves." Sybil's doctor was Dr Cornelia Wilbur, working with Arnold Ludwig. Ludwig was a believer in the "brainwashing" model of "cults." The book was written by a Feminist, because the clinical report was refused by the medical profession. Sybil was the ultimate "survivor" - she didn't know she had been abused. She only knew when assisted by one of the scientific elite! Sybil remembers in an altered state of consciousness. SYBIL was filmed, and entered popular culture. There was now the possibility of reconstructing the Lifton "brainwashing" model. Children physically tortured would have no knowledge of it because they would have "another personality." This is where Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) comes in. In the Freudian model that lasted from 1900 until 1970, psychopathology was seen as the result of a conflict between unacknowledged instinctual drives and the demands of external reality. From 1970 on the "dissociation theory" came to the forefront. The individual splits a memory of a traumatic experience off . Time passes and the memories "reappear" as fragmentary. Therapy and hypnosis unifies it into "memory." With the MPD diagnosis, those doing it made themselves heard (you have to have a diagnosis for the insurance to pay for your therapy). These concepts of "distinct personalities" and "hidden memories" were written into the DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS (Third Edition). The SYBIL movie projected to potential MPD patients ("multiples") the model of how to behave and how everyone else should react. Everyone who saw SYBIL knew what to do. When introduced to a "multiple" the thing to say was "Who am I speaking to?" MPD was not there before. It was taught through the mass media. The DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS (Third Edition) reaffirmed that those with "subpersonalities" as a result of hypnotic therapy are frequently victims of a crime (incestuous sexual abuse). Up until 1980 there were 200 cases of MPD in history. After 1980 it went right off the chart. And why were "multiples" not seen before therapy? They were hiding! Chronic depression "could be" conflicting personalities. The process of "calling out" alter-egos ("alters") could take hours until the patient presents an alternate personality.

The therapist was instructed to consider "alters" as distinct personalities. Toys were provided for child personalities! By 1984 when the first international conference of MPD was held, the problem had already arisen of increasingly violent images coming from the patient. Twenty-five per cent of patients were claiming they had been tortured in Satanic Cults. The Satanic Cult was a myth - that Great Satanic Cult of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that led to the witch hunts. In 1980 MICHELLE REMEMBERS by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, MD, crystallised in popular culture Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Bennett G. Braun wrote PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN CHEMISTRY IN THE PROGRAMMING OF HUMAN BEINGS. There was an economic factor here. Braun and those who diagnosed SRA profited. There was a Rorschach Abuse Patient Checklist, in which if you get so many "points" you are a "Satanic multiple" and you just don't know it yet. Books of this nature are still being written - see the work of Alex Constantine and Cathy Gould.

The HANDBOOK OF HYPNOTIC SUGGESTIONS AND METAPHORS was written by D. Corydon Hammond PhD. He organised a committee on "recovered memory" and gave the (in)famous "Greenbaum Speech" in which he declared that Satanic Cults emerged in Nazi Germany and a Jewish boy in one of these cults was got to by the CIA who used him to abuse children in the USA.

We are shown a video. It is a training video for clinicians involving Dr Roberta Sachs. The patient in the video has MPD but has no traumatic memories. The doctor needs to get memories from her - why else would the patient be there? The techniques include: group therapy where the patient is put among a group who share their Satanic stories with each other; group therapy in which each patient slings mud against a wall to express their anger against the obligatory person that abused them; a little model schoolroom [which in all honesty can only be described as a Satanic Ritual Abuse Action Playset! - BK] including play figures with which the patient is to act out the supposed abuse - the adult figure is dressed all in black and there is a pentagram on the blackboard; and finally the patient is tied down to her bed with straps and pumped full of sodium amentol.

UnConvention '97 reviews

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