A Psychoanalytic Look at Recovered Memories, Therapists, Cult Leaders, and Undue Influence
New Jersey Institute of Psychoanalysis
Abstract
There has been a dramatic increase in recovered memories of sexual abuse. A continuum of influence is presented, focusing on the high degrees of influence in cults, to understand how therapists can easily influence their patients to recover memories of sexual abuse. Historical evidence is given for a better appreciation of how this present atmosphere has developed. Finally, the role played by the psychoanalyst when dealing with recovered memories is examined. Case material is presented to highlight the differences between the traumatist's and the psychoanalyst's approach.
Introduction
During the last fifteen years, there has been an explosion of recovered memories of sexual abuse. After examining how this explosion has affected the author's patients, causative factors for this explosion will be addressed. Next, a variety of conditions that might lead a patient to "recovered" memories of abuse that never occurred will be described. Finally, the paper will focus on the psychoanalyst's stance in the face of recovered memories.
I have been a clinical social worker since 1970 and, in 1984, received certification as a psychoanalyst. In the twenty-five years that I have been seeing patients, there were many times that patients came to therapy with memories of sexual abuse. These never forgotten memories of sexual abuse in childhood or during adolescence were accepted by them and by me as historical truths. In addition to this, some patients have recovered memories of sexual abuse, previously forgotten, in this clinical setting. My course, as a clinician, was to inform patients that it was hard to distinguish whether recovered memories were memories of fantasies, because unconscious wishes and fears could influence memory. Recovered memories can be viewed in the same manner as dream material?that is, as screen memories. However, I never discounted this possibility of the historical truths embedded in these memories.
During the last few years, my caseload has been affected by a new phenomenon. Since the mid-seventies, I have specialized in working with former cultists. This area of specialization has given me a rich appreciation of the power of influence. In an article published in 1989, William Goldberg and I described the plight of a family whose son had what was thought to be a unique and bizarre complaint. He had "discovered" through hypnosis that he had been sexually abused by his mother and older sister. The incredulous family denied that any such behavior ever took place; but their son refused to listen to their denials and cut off all communication with them, saying that he could not speak to such monsters. Both the therapist/cult leader and the young man traveled throughout New Jersey speaking publicly about the horrors of childhood sexual abuse. What concerned us was the fact that all of this therapist's patients appeared to be recovering from memories of childhood sexual abuse and that this therapist seemed to be encouraging her clients to break off ties with their families and to increase their tie to her as their new parental figure. Normal therapeutic boundaries appeared to be broken as this therapist seemed to control every aspect of this young man's life. His total devotion to her and dependency on her was familiar to us. It appeared to be similar to the relationship we saw between other cult leaders and followers.
We wrote this description as an example of the extent to which one cult leader went to discredit the parents of one of her members (Goldberg and Goldberg, 1989). We were used to parents telling us that their cult member children were exaggerating and distorting problems and issues from their past (minimizing the good memories and maximizing the bad ones), but had never before encountered parents who said that their child had, with the "help" of a cult leader, completely fabricated a past.
It would be unfairly biased to totally discount the idea that this young man might be telling the truth. However, we were dismayed to learn that all of this therapist's patients had memories of abuse and that this therapist appeared to be using narcissistically her patients for her own dog-and-pony show and encouraging her patients to break all ties with family members. Therefore, we hypothesized that this young man was likely to have responded to this therapist's suggestion that he had been abused.
Since that incident the author has heard the same story from many parents. Their adult son or, more commonly, daughter, announces to the family that with the help of a therapist she has recovered previously repressed memories of being sexually abused, sometimes while she was an infant, sometimes over many years, usually by her father. She presents the accusation as a fact and states that if her father denies the "fact" or gets angry, she will leave and the family will never hear from her again. Having been pre-empted from any kind of natural response, the parents are left speechless. Eventually, and almost inevitably, she does cut off ties with the parents, because it has been suggested to her by her therapist that this is an act of empowerment and growth. Contact with siblings is usually also stopped unless the brothers and sisters acknowledge the validity of the accuser's claims. Thus, the daughter (or, sometimes, son) simultaneously ensures the fact that she will hear only one version of her supposed past and cuts herself off from the very people who would be most likely to support her through a difficult period of her life. The author had no idea at the time that she first heard this story of the young man and his publicity-seeking therapist that these were the early signs of a new phenomenon and that it would be so widespread as to be given a clinical title, the False Memory Syndrome, by some clinicians and family members.
In my chapter on "Guidelines for Therapists," in the book, Recovery from Cults (Langone, 1994), I described a twenty-eight year old woman who came to see me one year after she had left her cult. When this woman was a teenager in the cult she had been seduced by the group's leader, who told her that it was G-d's will that they have sex. Believing him to be speaking for G-d, the woman entered into an ongoing secret sexual relationship with him, only to discover, many years later, that he was having a similar relationship with at least twelve of the women in the cult. This discovery propelled her to leave the cult. The young woman was filled with self-loathing and shame when she left and she sought out therapy with a woman who claimed to be an expert in the area of sexual abuse. Either being ignorant of the powerful effect of persuasion and mind control in cults or ignoring the literature on it (Lifton, 1961, Ofshe and Singer, 1986, Hassan, 1988), this previous therapist told the young woman that it was clear that she was reenacting a situation from her childhood, otherwise she would not have permitted the cult leader to abuse her in this way. She told her that, in all probability, her father had been the original perpetrator and that her memories of a happy childhood were the result of denial and repression of childhood sexual abuse. Although the patient was unable to recall any such abuse, she was placed in a group for incest survivors and was told to participate in group guided imagery exercises to help her recall the abuse that the therapist surmised was there. At first, she recollected feeling uncomfortable when an alcoholic uncle bugged her after he had been drinking. She was convinced that more memories would come in time. It was only after she attended a seminar on cults and came to understand the phenomenon of mind control (intense power of influence by a charismatic anti-social and/or narcissistic leader in a closed environment) that she recognized another plausible explanation for why she had permitted herself to be exploited by the cult leader.
The author worked with another woman who was involved with an isolationist psychotherapy cult in the Northwest. The group preached hatred of men and, by extension, of society. Through the use of group processes, every single member of this cult discovered that she had been sexually abused by her father and cut herself off from the family. Another patient, who had experienced a gang rape while in college, decided to attend a group for rape survivors in New York City. After getting a brief history of this patient, including a history of depression and of an eating disorder, the group therapist asked her if she had been sexually abused in childhood. This patient had no memory of such abuse. The therapist informed her that she had all the "classic symptoms" of someone who was sexually abused and that she probably had repressed those memories.
As Freud (Freud, 1921), Lifton (Lifton, 1961), Ofshe and Singer (Ofshe, R. and Singer, M.T., 1986) and Hassan (Hassan, 1988) explain, an authority figure can have tremendous influence over group members. The process whereby this influence can be attained will now be examined.
Authority Figure Influence on Group Members
In 1921, upon publishing Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud was among the first to study the powerful influence that group leaders can have over group members. In his paper, Freud referred to the contagious and regressive nature of groups described by LeBon and McDougall, but he added the dimension of intra-psychic cathartic shifts that could occur in groups. Freud described the similarity of such groups as the Catholic Church and the army with the hypnotic situation. In all of these situations, there is a leader and one or more followers. The follower obeys the leader and gives up his own superego and ego ideal as he identifies with the leader's superego. Freud also compared the psychological changes occurring in group members to changes that occur to those who fall in love. In both cases, the ego can disregard the previous standards of the superego, because it gains a sufficient amount of narcissistic support and gratification of instinctual wishes elsewhere.
After the Korean War, under assignment by the U.S. Army, Lifton Singer, West, and others studied the effects of mind control techniques on the returning POWs. They described how these soldiers had been influenced to accept communist ideology while captive. They explained how these techniques of coercive persuasion went beyond normal group influences described by Freud through the use of deliberate manipulation processes that increased guilt, shame, and anxiety in the POW?s (Singer and Ofshe, 1990). These mental health professionals were the first to describe the fact that some of the same mind control dynamics are used in modern day cults. Today there is a recognized body of literature by mental health professionals about mind control techniques used in cults.
Of course, in addition to examining the coercive techniques, the clinician must examine the vulnerability of the cult recruit. Individuals become vulnerable to cults at times of stress, particularly during periods of transition (e.g., when dealing with loss of a relationship or employment). The large majority of people who join cults do so in late adolescence or early adulthood. With puberty, there is an increase in the sexual and aggressive drives. Along with this, there is a revival of oedipal feelings and, therefore, there is a need for distancing from the oedipal objects of childhood. Parents are de-idealized and healthy young adults attempt to develop a vision of the world that is different from their parent's view. Also, during this time, there often is physical distance from the family. This distance and the concomitant feelings of separateness it engenders may trigger pre-oedipal anxiety and/or depression. Additionally, there are specific personality dynamics of late adolescence which were first described by Anna Freud?intellectualization, asceticism and idealism?which make adolescents vulnerable to cults (Freud 1966). Furthermore, the adolescent superego is highly susceptible to environmental influences as a result of parental de-identification. Therefore, this is a time of life that the group or group leader can have a powerful influence.
Adolescents and young adults also are in a period of transition and may desire a sense of community and acceptance at a time in their life when they are experiencing uncertainty and/or anxiety about their identities and their futures. Therefore, this is a stage of development wherein group membership and the new identifications made with group members can be a progressive step of separation from the object, of childhood. As mentioned previously, an adolescent becomes particularly vulnerable to cult recruitment at a time when he or she is dealing with external and/or internal losses. Those who are particularly susceptible to groups that turn out to be cults are typically those who are in order to attack the recruits' identity and belief system; and (6) pressuring recruits to meet a new standard of perfection. These influence techniques attack the recruit's identity structure, formed from identifications made with important figures in the recruit's life. That is, without conscious awareness of this process, individuals are induced to let go of their original identity and take on a new cultic identity and, by doing so, enter into a dissociative state. This cultic identity enables the recruit to better cope with this recruitment process.
In viewing this situation psycho dynamically, it could be said that with the absence of an anchor in the past, recruits defend against feeling anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, and confused by forming an identification with the cult leader?identification with the aggressor. Anna Freud coined "identification with the aggressor" in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, to describe how a child "introjects some characteristic of an anxiety object and so assimilates an anxiety experience which he has just undergone" (Freud, 1966, p. 113). This defense was not only used to describe a process of childhood, but was seen as a defensive maneuver used at later periods of life when the individual was undergoing high levels of stress. For example, the defense of identification with the aggressor was later used to understand how Jews imprisoned in concentration camps sought out discarded insignias and torn shreds of SS uniforms with which to adorn their rags (West and Martin, 1994).
If this process is prolonged, the new cultic personality, initially formed as a role played in response to stressful circumstances, will be superimposed upon the original personality which, while not completely forgotten, will be enveloped within the shell of the new cultic personality (West and Martin, 1994). This new cultic identification encapsulates the general regression that occurs in recruits to cults. The pre-oedipal cult world is seen as black and white and objects as good and evil. This view, which defines the cult world as the only true path and the outside world (often including family and friends) as satanic, further binds the recruit to the cult. This also has implications for memory of past relationships and events. Typically, over time, life prior to the cult begins to be seen in a more negative light. Furthermore, there is a sense of omnipotence gained by sharing with the all-powerful cult leader (mother). This sense of omnipotence is experienced as euphoria by the recruit. The boundaries have blurred and the recruit's sense of individuality is weakened.
Cult members become aware of the positive effect of belonging to a single-minded community. Whitsett describes how this sense of belonging can be used as a powerful tool to keep recruits in cults (Whitsett, pp. 363-375). However, the pressure for uniformity has a regressive influence on the ego, precluding any type of critical assessment of this coercive and highly suggestive experience. Recruits are actively discouraged from differentiating their own thoughts and feelings from those of the group. This single-mindedness is reinforced through a strict system of reward and punishment. There is constant pressure to be obedient to the cult leader. If recruits have doubts or go against the cult leader's wishes, they are humiliated or, worse, threatened with excommunication?which cult members come to believe is being damned to Hell. Furthermore, their doubt is defined as a reflection of their personal problems, not as reflection of deficiencies within the leader or the ideology, Therefore, by punishing any expression of doubt, the leader induces cult members to become more and more dependent on receiving his approval through obedient behavior. In this way, ego functions that interfere with group functions are attacked and diminished. The cult member becomes child-like and suggestible. Therefore, in order to continue to feel good the recruit must continually be locked into an idealizing transference the cult leader, which never ends and never is interpreted.
It was understandable how anti-social and/or narcissistic cult leaders will use suggestion of childhood sexual abuse as a technique for further separating cult members from their parents. It was harder to understand how well-meaning therapists could suggest this to their patients The suspicion is that some therapists are not aware of how much influence they have over their patients. Only a very small minority of therapists consciously and deceptively employs some of the techniques used by cult leaders. However, there is a continuum of influence and, although therapists do not have the degree of influence over patients that cult leaders have over their followers, all therapists should recognize that their behavior and attitudes do have some degree of influence on their patients. Before this concept is developed further, an historical overview of recovered memories will be explored.
The whole of the article is up at:
http://www.blgoldberg.com/MEMORIES.htm
I thought it was excellent!
Randy Watters
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