Satan Wants You! Michelle Remembers book 1980

[MGibster]

A psychiatrist "recovering" a memory of something that never happened is an example of gaslighting. You are manipulating someone into believing something that never happened.

Gaslighting is a deliberate effort to put forth a false narrative in order to make someone else doubt the veracity of their own version of events. Health care professionals who bought into recovered memories weren't just fooling their patients they were fooling themselves. i.e. Unlike a gaslighter, those health care professionals genuinely believed they were recovering false memories.

 

[The Soloist]

I never even heard of that term before, but just the name makes me instantly think that we all know it better under the term gaslighting.

And than the guy married the patient he was gaslighting.
Yeah...

From what I gather, Michelle Smith was inventing her memories because she was in love with the psychiatrist. It was a way for her to keep seeing him. She was not an innocent victim. It was a codependent lie structure that became a Con Job which took the form of a book.

 

[prabe]

No, recovered memory therapy.

That sounds like manipulating a person into believing they remember something that they never experienced.

And human memory is pretty easy to manipulate, even by accident. Even if the patient isn't willfully lying.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

And than the guy married the patient he was gaslighting.
Yeah...

That's a huge red flag there. Even if you accept the possibility that that was her goal, it's an enormous violation of ethics for a psychiatrist.

Gaslighting is a deliberate effort to put forth a false narrative in order to make someone else doubt the veracity of their own version of events. Health care professionals who bought into recovered memories weren't just fooling their patients they were fooling themselves. i.e. Unlike a gaslighter, those health care professionals genuinely believed they were recovering false memories.

Yeah, they absolutely believed in the truth of this, took everything at face value. The movie even points out that the number of babies that were claimed to have been abducted every year by Satanists was actual equal to half the number of children born in the US every year.

From what I gather, Michelle Smith was inventing her memories because she was in love with the psychiatrist. It was a way for her to keep seeing him. She was not an innocent victim. It was a codependent lie structure that became a Con Job which took the form of a book.

Both of them in a way, were both victim and victimizer, it seems. And the repercussions for the world ended up being massive.

I think about when I was a kid, there was a spooky old house we used to walk past. Other kids said that a witch lived there, and that she ate children. An abandoned wheelchair under some pines was pointed at as proof. Kids make up stories all the time, and yet the Satanic Panic was fueled by people taking them as the truth.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think about when I was a kid, there was a spooky old house we used to walk past.

Wherever you grow up, there is a spooky house that the kids have to walk past on the way to/from school.

What a lot of people don't realise is it's always the same house.

 

[MGibster]

Yeah, they absolutely believed in the truth of this, took everything at face value. The movie even points out that the number of babies that were claimed to have been abducted every year by Satanists was actual equal to half the number of children born in the US every year.

For the McMartin Pre-School Trial, what was at the time the longest and most expensive criminal trial in US history, Kee McDaniel interviewed alleged victims by asking them leading questions, praising them for the "right" answers and chiding them for the "wrong" answers. And naturally, when a kid says they've been abused, most of our reactions, especially if we're a parent, is to believe the child. They wouldn't make something like that up! And they're correct, they wouldn't. But kids want validation, and when you tell them they've been abused and praise them for saying so you increase the chances of getting bad information.

We do call it the Satanic Panic because a key feature was the idea of groups engaging in ritual abusive behavior mostly directed at children. And when you tell parents their kids are in danger they tend to listen. Even if they weren't worried about Satan, they were worried their kids might not be safe at school or playgrounds. I used to make fun of Patricia Pulling, but the more I learned about her the more her story just made me sad. This was a woman who lost her child in a most horrible fashion and was trying to find an explanation. She bought into a lie.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Wherever you grow up, there is a spooky house that the kids have to walk past on the way to/from school.

What a lot of people don't realise is it's always the same house.

There's a great story in that little kernel!

So what was your spooky house as a kid?

For the McMartin Pre-School Trial, what was at the time the longest and most expensive criminal trial in US history, Kee McDaniel interviewed alleged victims by asking them leading questions, praising them for the "right" answers and chiding them for the "wrong" answers. And naturally, when a kid says they've been abused, most of our reactions, especially if we're a parent, is to believe the child. They wouldn't make something like that up! And they're correct, they wouldn't. But kids want validation, and when you tell them they've been abused and praise them for saying so you increase the chances of getting bad information.

We do call it the Satanic Panic because a key feature was the idea of groups engaging in ritual abusive behavior mostly directed at children. And when you tell parents their kids are in danger they tend to listen. Even if they weren't worried about Satan, they were worried their kids might not be safe at school or playgrounds. I used to make fun of Patricia Pulling, but the more I learned about her the more her story just made me sad. This was a woman who lost her child in a most horrible fashion and was trying to find an explanation. She bought into a lie.

Believe the children was the rallying cry during the Satanic Panic. And we see what doing that unquestioningly caused.

Having read Pat Pulling's The Devil's Web, I agree. For all the harm she did, she still was a person grieving an unimaginable loss.

 

[The Soloist]

There's a great story in that little kernel!

So what was your spooky house as a kid?



Believe the children was the rallying cry during the Satanic Panic. And we see what doing that unquestioningly caused.

Having read Pat Pulling's The Devil's Web, I agree. For all the harm she did, she still was a person grieving an unimaginable loss.

I did not know about Michael A. Stackpole's book Game Hysteria and the Truth and how he shut down Pulling with his The Pulling Report.

"By 1991 the American Association of Suicidology, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and Health and Welfare Canada all concluded that there was no causal link between fantasy gaming and suicide.[14]"

 

[Nikosandros]

There was no spooky house when I was a kid, even though the entrance hall of the XVth Century palace where I grew up could be a little spooky at night.

However, when I worked at Emory in Atlanta for two years, I rented an apartment nearby and on the way to work there was a dilapidated house that was all boarded up. Despite that, every night after dark one of the upstairs window would be lighted up, but not the same one every time. I must admit that I often saw rather mundane gardeners working the lawn, but it was still a bit unsettling...

 

[Clint_L]

No, recovered memory therapy.

That sounds like manipulating a person into believing they remember something that they never experienced.

Yes, though again most cases weren't gaslighting exactly, because the therapist also believed in the outlandish stories. Most seemed to think they were helping their patients, even while doing tremendous harm.