Word: incest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That kind of reasoning does not sit well with Margaret Singer, a retired professor from the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on cults and influence techniques. She has interviewed 50 people who once believed they had recovered repressed memories of incest or ritual abuse but now think they were mistaken. All 50, Singer emphasizes, were in therapy when they "recovered" terrifying memories of abuse. "These people are reporting to me that their therapists were far more sure than they were that their parents had molested them...
...such recovered memories are indeed false, where do they originate? From two sources, critics say: the popular culture and misguided or inept therapy. Sensational tales about recovered memories of incest have been grist for celebrity-magazine cover stories. And repressed-memory incest and satanic- ritual-abuse victims have been featured prominently on Geraldo, Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphael and other daytime TV talk shows...
...remember your abuse, you are not alone. Many women don't have memories . . . this doesn't mean they weren't abused." Like many of the authors of these self-help books, neither Davis nor Bass has any academic training in psychology, although Davis claims to be an incest survivor. Yet many therapists urge their patients to read Courage and other similar volumes...
Almost any night, in any major American city, adult incest and ritual-abuse survivor meetings are held in church basements and community rooms. Churches and other institutions also offer counseling for dissociative disorders and satanic-ritual-abuse victims...
Private psychiatric hospitals, which advertise in medical journals and airline magazines, are profiting as well. "We can help you remember and heal," promises one ad for ASCA Treatment Centers in Compton, California. "Remembering incest and childhood abuse is the first step to healing...