{"id":3219,"date":"2005-06-18T12:28:04","date_gmt":"2005-06-18T16:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3219"},"modified":"2022-10-09T17:34:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T21:34:46","slug":"recovered-memories-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3219","title":{"rendered":"“Recovered memories”"},"content":{"rendered":"

An absolutely amazing article<\/a> about a woman who has been “missing” since 1990. Her mother has been tireless in trying to find out what happened to her daughter, convinced that she was still alive.<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that yes, she is alive. Illinois police have confirmed that they have located this woman, now 33 years old. She is living under an assumed identity.<\/p>\n

At the time of the disappearance, Robin Mewes had been receiving mental health counseling in Paris, Ill. Reports about the circumstances indicate a counselor convinced the teenager that she was a victim of intergenerational satanic cult abuse – a claim her mother says is false.<\/p>\n

In mid-September 1990, Mewes told family members she was on her way to see a friend in southern Illinois. She never showed.<\/p>\n

A day later, she was seen at a Rax Restaurant in Terre Haute. Her mother believes Robin met with her counselor and three police officers before receiving a new Social Security number and taking on a new identity. Her family has not seen her since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, you got that? This whole “recovered memory” trend of therapy has always been fascinating to me – I guess because it taps right into my questions about identity, reality, and … what is memory? What is it?? What is the self? Can someone get into your brain and actually plant things in there?? Well, of course they can. That’s what brainwashing is all about. I’m fascinated by that whole process. It frightens me, yet draws me in … Is my identity so fragile? What about in situations like the aborted Stanford Prison Experiment<\/a>? Personalities shattering under completely phony circumstances … Within 24 hours, the “guards” behaved like brutal prison guards and the “prisoners” began to panic and crumble. Amazing. You would think … that under a manufactured experiement … SOME part of you could maintain your sense of self, your sense of “this is only make-believe” but not one person did. Not even the guy who set up the experiement!! Even he ended up getting sucked into the charade, and his “role”. 5 days in, his main goal became to “protect the prison” – as though he were a warden. He forgot that his main goal was to “monitor the effects of the experiement” … He forget who he was!! Fascinating and very frightening. I know it’s a controversial experiment to this day, and I have problems with some of it (the experiment itself, and also how the results are used to push certain public policies) – BUT I think we ignore the message there about personality\/identity\/pressure at our peril.<\/p>\n

Added later: The following paragraph is a rant based merely on past experience. Which is kind of silly, I know. We all must try to live in the present. So take it with a grain of salt. I won’t edit it, because the sentiments I express are true – and I meant them when I wrote them … but I was probably over-reacting based on being condescended to by assholes in the past.<\/i><\/p>\n

(And please, here’s a message to all you know it alls out there who, in general, find my curiosity about things kind of silly – no matter the topic – and feel the need to talk down to me whenever I have the vulnerability to ask a question: Do not scorn the fact that I ask questions, and if you provide a too-ready or too-facile answer, then I do not trust you. Sorry to be blunt and rude, but whenever I write on this stuff, I always get some know-it-all scorning the fact that I’m curious at all, because the answers to all my questions are sooooooo self-evident. PLEASE. Do not be boring like that. If you’re interested in speculating about this with me, if you have anything to add … feel free. But a too-quick assumption of complete knowledge – at least in this area – is a huge red flag of dishonesty to me. So don’t do it.) I’m interested in this problem of the “personality”, and the self, and drawn to it – my longest post about it is here <\/a>… even more so witnessing the quick and complete surrender of Katie Holmes … Where is the identity? If you lock me in a closet for 2 weeks, and tell me my family are evil … would I then emerge, and put on a black beret, and change my name to Tania, and shoot up a bank? It is hard to contemplate, but it’s FASCINATING to me. The nature of consciousness, of personality, of self … how fluid is it, how impressionable are we really?<\/p>\n

What is “recovered memory” therapy? I wrote a really long post about it, <\/a>providing links to a couple of really informative sites. Dorothy Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer for her investigative journalism in this area. It’s a deep deep pool – this whole recovered memory thing. It appears that therapists can implant false memories of abuse – which appears to be what has happened in the case of this woman from Illinois. It’s a tricky thing to talk about – because there are real cases of real abuse out there, and those must not be discounted, but there are also charlatans out there, like these therapists, who are creating chaos where there was none. This “recovered memory” stuff has ruined families – it seems to come in waves, too. I’m not sure – but a wave of hysteria about ritualistic Satanic cult abuse will overtake a community – one child says he remembers something – then another child says he remembers the same thing … when all of it could very well be fabricated.<\/p>\n

Rick Ross (as always) has an extensive archive <\/a>on some of these “recovered memory” cases. It’s horrifying reading.<\/p>\n

Pamela Freyd is executive director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article about the Illinois woman says:<\/p>\n

Freyd says 23,000 families have contacted the foundation since, seeking help when family members have broken off contact after being convinced through therapy sessions of being abused as children.<\/p>\n

According to the foundation’s Web site, about 18 percent of families they surveyed have been accused of being part of an intergenerational cult that dress in robes, sacrifice babies and engage in cannibalism and bestiality. No evidence supports existence of such an intergenerational cult, the site says.<\/p>\n

Freyd does not downplay the problem of sexual abuse. She knows it’s real.<\/p>\n

She also knows that some therapy techniques are detrimental.<\/p>\n

“In therapy, we’ve had a lot of fads that have taken hold and existed for awhile,” she said. She is optimistic that the trend of recovered memory is waning; the foundation is receiving fewer reports of false memory syndrome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robin Mewes, the woman who “disappeared” in 1990, so far has not been reunited with her family.<\/p>\n

Freyd of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation said that’s not an easy process.<\/p>\n

“Something has to get through to them that makes them question the reality of their beliefs,” Fryed said. About half of the families surveyed by the foundation have been reunited.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(via Cult News <\/a>– which is now the first place I stop every day.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An absolutely amazing article about a woman who has been “missing” since 1990. Her mother has been tireless in trying to find out what happened to her daughter, convinced that she was still alive. Well, it turns out that yes, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178519,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions\/178519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}